The Violet Hour
by Katie Roiphe, Virago, £16.99
Subtitled Great Writers at the End, this book is written on the premise that writers are “especially sensitive or attuned to death” and that they “have worked through the problem of death in their art, in their letters, in their love affairs, in their dreams”. Katie Roiphe, who admits that she wrote the volume because of her own fear of death, draws on the writings, letters and diaries of her chosen group, as well as interviewing family members and friends.
