Lisette

In this intimate and deeply reflective literary memoir, a writer revisits her friendship with Lisette - an elderly French émigré living alone by the ocean in Western Australia - who calmly and deliberately chose the time and manner of her own death.

Over cups of tea, manuscript discussions and long conversations about literature, memory, desire and ageing, Lisette gradually reveals the logic behind her decision. Once a glamorous cosmopolitan woman who moved through postwar New York among artists, diplomats and celebrities, she now faces the indignities of physical decline with fierce lucidity and unwavering independence. Refusing institutionalisation and determined to preserve her autonomy, she prepares meticulously for what she calls "the big thing."

Blending memoir, philosophical reflection and reconstructed narrative, the book becomes far more than an account of assisted dying. It is a meditation on friendship, female ageing, invisibility, memory, erotic life, exile and the painful distance between youth and old age. Moving between Perth, Lisbon, France and memories of Manhattan, the narrator examines the emotional and ethical complexity of Lisette's choice while confronting her own evolving understanding of mortality.

Written in luminous, restrained prose, this work stands apart for its compassion, intellectual honesty and emotional precision. Rather than arguing polemically, it offers an unforgettable portrait of one woman's determination to shape the end of her life on her own terms - and of the friend left behind to understand it.