Drawing on the author’s seven years of caring for his mother through Alzheimer’s, Be With: Letters to a Caregiver is what its title promises: four dispatches to an anonymous long-term caregiver. In brief passages that cast fresh light on what it means to live with dementia, Barnes shares trials, insights, solace—and, ultimately, inspiration. Meant to be a companion in waiting rooms, on bus routes, or while a loved one naps, Be With is a dippable source of clarity for harried readers who might only have time for a few lines or paragraphs. Mike Barnes writes with sensitivity and grace about fellowship, responsibility, and joyful relatedness—what it means to simply be with the people that we love. Praise for Be With “Timely, lyrical, tough, accurate.” —Margaret Atwood “Beautiful.” —CHCH-TV “My heart lodged in my throat and my eyes stayed glassy over the brief duration of Be With: Letters to a Caregiver. It's a lovely, loving, and unflinching work ... He shares knowledge ("The truth is, there's no graceful way to take control of someone's life away from them") and he asks questions ("How much room in your own heart?") any caregiver must consider. He also asserts his primary insight: "But being with in person trumps all else. It's the one way of caring most likely to be right, and the least likely to be regretted.” —Toronto Star “The particulars of Mary’s dementia give this brief book universal appeal. The author effectively humanizes himself as a man who has made errors, who wishes he had done things differently, and who has his own psychological burdens to bear...A book that tells the reader that you are not alone, whoever you are.” —Kirkus Reviews “In their simplicity and even-handed tone, the letters achieve their author’s difficult aim: they present as a literary Third Man, a friendly, authoritative voice in the dark that will lead its at-the-end-of-their-tether listeners through to the endgame...What really matters, he concludes, is the hardest thing, being there with her. “For every thousand pages describing how living is shattered by this dread disease, there should be at least one page observing how living goes on within it.” Be With has 156 pages of them." —Literary Review of Canada Praise for Mike Barnes “… fiercely alive, marked by a sharp, unerring eye for detail and a wonderful way with metaphors.” —Toronto Star “His lucid prose brings to mind Poe’s Gothic horror, Hunter S. Thompson’s strangeness (without the drug-craze), and William Burroughs’ ellipsis (without the disintegration). But it is perhaps closest to Roald Dahl’s intimate exploration of human oddity and use of surprise in Switch Bitch.” —Globe and Mail About the Author: Mike Barnes has published eight previous books across a range of genres: poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir. His collection of poems, Calm Jazz Sea, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award; and Aquarium, his first collection of stories, won the Danuta Gleed Award. His newest book is The Adjustment League (2016), the first in a series of three noir novels. He works as a private English tutor and lives in Toronto.
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