SHORT & SWEET REVIEW: 60 POSTCARDS BY RACHAEL CHADWICK

Note, the format of my Short and Sweet reviews differs in that they simply comprise the book blurb and a short response (hence, the short and sweet). Sometimes I have too many books to do a full-length review!

60 Postcards by Rachael Chadwick, Simon & Schuster UK $25

Reading the first line of the blurb stops me in my tracks. I can only begin to imagine how this would have felt for the author.

On 11 February 2012 Rachael Chadwick lost her Mother to cancer, just sixteen days after first being diagnosed, and her world shattered right in front of her. Utterly fed up of the milestones and reminders, in December of that year she decided she would do something different and created a project based around her Mum’s approaching 60th Birthday. Desperate to spread the word about the wonderful person she had lost, Rachael had the brainwave of leaving notes around a city in her memory. Deciding she would take it a step further she wondered what would happen if she could ask people to respond to her? Full of hope and energy she hand-wrote sixty postcards, each with her email address at the bottom asking the finder to get in touch. But one question remained, where should she go? Knowing how much she longed to visit Paris, the last gift that Rachael’s mum had given her was Eurostar vouchers, and so it seemed fitting that this would be her chosen city. So off she went with a group of friends to celebrate, discover, and to scatter her memories…

60 Postcards is a heartfelt tribute to writer/blogger Rachael Chadwick’s mother, sharing both her pain in learning of her mother’s diagnosis, her love for her family, and her grief, as well as the excitement of discovering her perfect way to honour her mother. When I hear about creative ideas like this for honouring a loved one, I’m always awed, and what I love about this is that Rachael has found a way to keep the memory of her mother alive and dynamic. Reading this made me want to give Rachael a big hug … as well as my mum. She lives 4000km away so I’m settling for a postcard (as suggested by Rachael) and some of her favourite chocolates. One for memoir readers.