A Funny Kind of Paradise

My room is a five-bed ward. I survey my domain from my corner. Four other beds, four other souls, four other poor sods stuck here like me: my roommates.

I know the most appallingly intimate things about them. And they about me, those who are still capable of knowing, which does rather narrow it down. We are not as we were, let s put it that way. (But unlike me, you are forgiving. You always were. Even now I am counting on your generous spirit.)

The bed on my left, in the darkest corner, belongs to Janet. Diabetes has made her blind and has taken her legs, amputated just below the knee, a fact that terrifies the new aides until someone teaches them how to position Janet s sling properly to ensure her safe transfer to the wheelchair. Once in a while, she complains about pain in her feet; sometimes she remembers they re gone and sometimes she doesn t. The nurses take her blood sugars, twitter about spiking and dropping, adjust her insulin and tell the aides to push juice or back off. Janet says she doesn t care. Janet hates the food.

Mary has the other bed with a window, but while my head is at the north wall, hers is on the south, so we face each other. Mary is the quintessential little old lady, with her permed hair in stiff white curls, her dentures, and a tissue up the sleeve of her cardigan. She is the darling, everyone s favourite, loved for her smile and her sunny nature. She was still walking with the help of the activity aides when I first came here, but she s on the slow slide, and no one would ever try to transfer her now without the overhead lift. She stiffened up gradually, and she talks a little less every day. We, her roommates, are grateful that she s passed the stage of calling out constantly, Hey, are you here for me? thinking that someone was coming to take her home to her mama. Mind you, we do miss some of the more innovative excuses the staff used to try to convince her that her mother wasn t going to be too worried about her whereabouts.

JO OWENS lives in Victoria and has worked as a health care aide for twenty years. A Funny Kind of Paradise is her first novel.

[An] affecting debut . . . Owens s believable, touching portrait of Frannie and the loving care of her aides is loaded with moments of beauty amid the swirl of regret and nostalgia. . . . These powerful final reflections of an irascible, regretful patient illustrate the unremarkable yet profound experience of nearing death. Publishers Weekly

Owens, a care aide for more than 20 years, captures the skill and tenderness of caring for someone at the end of life in direct and unvarnished prose. . . . Each [care aide] . . . is richly drawn and complex . . . [and the novel] serves to illuminate a vital profession that has been rarely documented in fiction. Vancouver Sun

"Like pulling rabbits from a hat, Jo Owens manages the magic of reaching into the most abject places of the human heart and other parts of the anatomy and finding joy, humour and redemption. She gifts the reader a story told with elegant wit and irreverent humour, and characters brought to life with love, often of the tough variety . . . and there is nothing more tender. I love this book." Ann-Marie MacDonald

Jo Owens achievement is astonishing. She has created a heroine whose zest for life is as unstoppable as her curiosity about the caregivers and patients in her long-term facility, and whose capacity for change is sometimes painful and frequently funny. What a delight to be privy to Francesca s blunt, ribald, exasperated and tender reactions to a life she never planned.   Katherine Ashenburg, author of Sofie & Cecilia and Her Turn

A Funny Kind of Paradise is a gorgeous and original novel that explores a reality too often looked away from. A deeply compassionate examination of human life and its immeasurable value. Kevin Patterson, author of News From the Red Desert