22 - Friday, September 30, 1988 -— North Shore News

FIREFLIES

“GIVE SORROW words: the grief that does not speak/
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.’’

It is with these two lines from
Shakespeare's Macbeth that
author David Morrell introduces
his non-fiction Fireflies, a noveliz-
ed account of the death of his
young son.

Fireflies is a gut-wrenching,
brutally honest story of something
which must surely be every caring
parent's worst nightmare: the loss
of a child.

This is not an easy book to read;
for your reviewer, simply opening
it was no mean feat. As is possibly
the case with many of us who
have lost a family member to
cancer, stepping inside the pain
and anguish of another's grief is a
place not lightly entered. So it was
with Fireflies.

The book lay on my desk, un-
touched, for the better part of two
weeks. Prompted by the fact of an
approaching interview with Mor-
rell, it was still only with great
reluctance that | gingerly began
the odyssey of this man’s intirnate
recounting of the events and emo-
tions that surrounded the death of
15-year-old Matthew Morrell,

Bizarre though it may seem to
say such a thing, Matthew was a
fortunate child. Blessed with in-
telligence and ability (he was a
Presidential scholar and stood in
the top one per cent of his state’s
students); his was a loving, sup-
portive family and he a valued
member.

But in January, 1987, he was
diagnosed a victim of Ewing’s sar-
coma (a rare form of cancer): his
life was doomed to end that June.

Fireflies is an exploration of that
period and the agonizing times
that followed. It is a true story of
courage, tenacity and love; it is the

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story of a gentle young man’s
struggle with the spectre of death
and the emotional chasm created
when he lost that struggle. It is also
the story of a fathe:’s profound
sorrow and the perhaps inevitable
questioning of the further value of
living in a world seemingly grown
cold and empty.

While the period immediately
following Matthew’s death was to
be the blackest of Morrell's life, it

MIKE
STEELE

book reviewer

also contained the sparks for a
rekindling of faith, sparks which
gave rise to this book and its title..,
Fireflies is a demanding, drain-
ing book and yet one which
paradoxically may furnish many
readers with insights into their
own losses of the past and those
which must inevitably follow.
Written partially as fiction as a
buffer to ease readers’ passage
(with an explanation beginning on
page 189 as to which elements
were inventions), Fireflies is best
savored quietly; it is a rare and
special book whose completed
reading cannot leave the sensitive
reader untouched. (Fireflies; Vik-
ing/Penguin; 216 pp.; $19.95 in

hardcover)
see

EPITAPH: An Interview With
David Morrell

Ontario-born David Morreil is
the author of several successful
thrillers including The

brutally ho

NOTHING CAN EASE THE PADS OP Last
STUGLOVER CHILD, MITHING BUT A THRE LE,

DAVID MORRELL

Brotherhood af The Rose and The
Fraternity of The Stone but is un-
doubtedly best-known for the
novel First Blood and its central
character, Rambo. Reviewer Mike
Steele spoke with Morrell recently
about his latest book Fireflies, the
true account of the death of Mor-
rell’s 15-year-old son, Matthew, a
cancer victim.

Q. While Fireflies is a non-fic-
tion story based on the events
leading up to and immediately fo!-
lowing Matthew’s passing, you
chose to write the book in a par-
tially-fictionalized framework using
the third person. Was this device
the only one that you could
employ to even approach some-
thing this painful?

A. “In part, yes, it was a
distancing device. But it also
reflects the ‘what if’ syndrome
that we all play: what if | had done
something different, could | have
saved him? It was like me writing a
form of psycho-analysis to prove
that no matter what we had done,
the outcome would not have been
any different. Also, while some
people have been very anxious to
read this book...we perceived a
potential problem with some peo-
ple not wanting to pick up the
book. Conceivably this way it
could be read simply as a novel

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DAVID MORRELL
with this buffer built into it so it
wouldn't be so overwhelming.”’

Q. Unlike your previous works,
David, Fireflies is not only true
but a very personal and sou!-bar-
ing story of a very traumatic part of
your life. Is it difficult to do this
author tour, talking about such a
painful and intimate matter?

A. “All of the royalties go to a
fund...for research and treatment
of children’s cancers and blood
diseases. | told my editor...that I’m
prepared to be a_ snake-oil
salesman if | have to be to get
people to buy this book and try to
make some good happen out of
this terrible thing. It would have
been horrible to make money out
of my son’s death.”’

Q. There are basically two
classes of people who are going to
read this book: the ones who have

never experienced this kind of.

tragedy and therefore may not feel
it pertinent to their lives, and the
others who have and may be

nest

reluctant to. open oid wounds.
What is there in Fireflies to over-
come this resistance?

A. “Obviously it's the kind of
book to which there may be some
resistance but for people who've
gone through this | think that
there’s some kind of validation, a
kind of sharing through the written
page. For the others; well, there’s
something | don’t mention in the
book.

“Matt had a friend who was
heavily into drugs and alcohol and
they were destroying him. One
day Matt walked over to him, my
beautiful 15-year-old boy without
any hair, skinny, not able to stand
as straight as he was once able to,
and says, ‘What’s the matter with
you? I’m fighting to stay alive and
you're doing everything you can
to kill yourself.’

“After Matt died the boy went
to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous)
and the equivalent organization
for drug problems and even rec-
onciled with his father, which had
been the source of a lot of his
problems. The kid’s now a decent
young man. Once again, there's
an example of some good coming
out of this terrible thing. | think it
may help some of us to put our
daily lives in perspective when we
see how Matt lived the last few
days of his life.”

Q. Fireflies contains elements of
faith and even optimism does it
not?

A. ‘I! didn’t want to write a
book that was, at the bottom,
pessimistic. What | wanted to do
was somehow to try to make sense
of the irrational and write about
the triumph of the spirit.

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