Dying Times (Exile Editions, 2021) and its recent Italian language iteration, Il carosello della morte (Les Flâneurs Edizioni, 2025, as part of their Canada imprint), are unusual works broaching one of the most universal and difficult of themes, death. The author, Darlene Madott, practiced law for about 35 years, all the while honing her craft as a writer. To date she has published nine books and is the recipient of numerous literary awards.
This book, self-described as a novel, reads like a very articulate, dramatic personal diary, and an intriguing one at that. The story revolves around the imminent death of two people very close to the unnamed first-person narrator, namely, her mother Francesca, and the narrator’s long-time business partner and senior in her legal practice, Jack. A third death, that of Jack’s extremely wealthy client Bernie, is also on the doorstep. But Bernie, long tied to a wheelchair, is consumed with thoughts of revenge and money. He hates his wife (who called him an “effing cripple” or “storpio di merda” in front of his children) and is determined to cut her off completely. So, as Jack, always calling a spade a spade, says of him, “His condition is awful: Mine is just that I’m dying.”
The novel begins with two significant quotations from the Beatitudes, namely Mathew 5:4, offering a blessing to those who mourn, and Mathew 5:6, the blessing for those who yearn for justice, sometimes translated as righteousness. These passages eloquently open windows onto the thematic and narrative drivers of this work and foreshadow the interior and interpersonal conflicts that fuel the story.
There is something very biblical underlying the central moral dilemma that grounds the narrative. The numerous biblical references interspersed throughout the text serve to underscore this point. The narrator-protagonist aspires to the pure goodness and ability to forgive that is held up as exemplary in Christian doctrine, and that is tenderly modelled by her mother. And yet the narrator is ravaged by anger, resentment and the inability to make peace with her difficult older sister Elizabeth – despite the pain this wrangling has clearly inflicted on her beloved parents, right up to the moment of their death. This failure haunts the narrator and, yet to the end, she cannot bring herself to be at peace with Elizabeth and thus with herself. It is the narrator’s very sense of justice, of righteousness, in the face of Elizabeth’s unaccountably (as it seems to her) selfish behaviour and jealousy that will not allow her to forgive, to reconcile and move on.
The other major thread that the author weaves into her exploration of life in the face of death is her relationship with Jack, whose Shtetel humour, wisdom and intelligent common sense provide a much-needed anchor and antidote for the often-beleaguered, tormented narrator. Here, in the context of her professional world, dominated as it is by conflict, strife and combative litigation, we are presented with an imperfect yet effective model for dealing with the harsher, almost grotesque, realities of human greed, vindictiveness and cruelty. Here, where interpersonal and marital issues sink deeper in the mire to become crass, strictly financial disputes where the dollar reigns supreme, we have a sage, high-minded if pragmatic guide through the circles of litigation purgatory and hell. There is an underlying black humour to many of these scenes and a good dose of crude obscenities to give flavour to the range of human depravity we witness, coming on the heels of the more elevated ideals, yearnings and anxieties explored elsewhere.
And so it is in Jack, her long-time professional mentor, that the narrator finds the model for living life in the presence of inevitable death – Jack, who embraces death as simply a small part of life and who insists through sheer will power that he will go only when he is good and ready, and when all the loose ends are neatly tied. (If only it could always be so.)
When the narrator says that she learned almost everything about the law and life from Jack, and is now learning about death, what she really means is that she is learning from him even how to live with the real and imminent presence of one’s own death. In the end, this novel is about life, an arc that starts from birth – that passage from the dark void into light – described early on in a dream sequence, and then the return passage through death and back into darkness and eternal sleep or, perhaps, to that something more than sleep that the narrator expresses through yearnings and dreams.
The author, as would be expected from such a seasoned writer, utilizes language and stylistic strategies and devices effectively to build her cast of characters, weave intriguing plot lines, tease the reader’s interest, and build tension effectively to charm us into wanting to stay with her, as she is projected through this tough, smart, successful and yet so vulnerable woman – a woman who is in the thrall of deep adult pain yet haunted by childlike visions, feelings of loss, and dreams of her loved ones. It is the intensity of this love that makes us want to be beside her as she meets and wrestles with her personal demons, and as she confronts and tries to come to a workable accommodation with her ethical struggles and existential concerns.
The Italian language publication lives up to the original with a very able and careful translation that delivers all these sfumature (nuances). This Italian edition offers, in addition, interesting preliminary commentary from the editor/curator, Giulia de Gasperi, and from the translator, Maria Pia Spadafora, as well as delivering an erudite, detailed and insightful introduction from professor emeritus, Gabriel Niccoli. There is much to engage the reader in these preliminary pages from expert close readers who approach the work from three very different perspectives.
One question I asked myself as I read the Italian translation was why the title “Il carosello della morte” was chosen over a more literal translation of the original title. In the English version, “Dying Times” comes straight out of the text, in the section titled “Golden Retriever Therapy,” and it is transparently apt. In the Italian version, the phrase “dying times” in this section is replaced by “carosello della morte.” The other usage of “carosello della morte” is on page 38 where it is used to replace the phrase “a whirligig of death and dying.” Here, the light of a possible explanation emerges. Like a whirligig, which gives pleasure by spinning its petals, the carousel too, with its dizzying rotations and speed suggests fun, release and laughter. And it is the juxtaposition of this laughter with death, with the absurdity of death in life, and its inevitability, that is the darkly comic heart of this story. Live, laugh, love, (amatevi) and if you can, forgive. This is what we may try to control; death is of another order, one beyond our reach.
Darlene Madott has conjured up, with relatively few words, a complex world that spans human experience in the fullness of life’s tragedies, ironies, conflicts, hurts and yes, love, care, friendship and devotion. She leaves us with all of these in the balance but ultimately subsumed by an ever-present sense of compassion for the vagaries of human life with its nucleus of inescapable death, and a deep sympathy for the inevitable personal limitations and attendant struggles we experience in life.
Whether we read Darlene Madott’s book for edification, for comfort in dark times, or for intellectual entertainment, there will be precious moments of insight, tenderness, courage, and tenaciousness in the face of life’s harsh realities. These moments will linger on in our musings long after the last words are read, if my own experience is any indication.
Nella Cotrupi is a retired lawyer. She is also a scholar, writer and translator currently at work on the publication of Carol Shields’ poetry in Italian translation.
