The Gate: Things My Mother Told Me

A moving story of the final years of a Polish émigrée's life, The Gate draws you in with subtlety, wit, compassion and faith. An intriguing and captivating look at the last sixty years of western culture that holds you even though we all know how her story is going to end. --Bryn Symonds, writer, Canada

Stan Law must be one of today's most unusual writers: he can create intellectual excitement with nothing but introspective dialogues, mind-stretching explorations of complex concepts like life, death, love and loyalty.

The writing has classical grandeur and poetic beauty, the characters are vividly drawn, especially the nurses' helper, a giant of a man named Raphael whose sensitivities and erudition match the author's. This is a jewel of a piece of writing, with an honesty that makes transcendence and incontinence equally noble a part of the narrative. If you value the life of the mind, this book is for you. --Kate Jones, writer, editor, USA

The Gate is a thought-provoking experience whose characters represent fleeting fragments of what we see in ourselves. --Adam Goldman, writer, Montreal

This beautiful nostalgic, sometimes humorous, memoir of Mrs. Kordos's life as she slowly slips into her own world is a book not to be missed. Truly remarkable! --Madeleine Whitthoeft, Pointe Claire, Quebec

An intimate novel of an eighty-year old women spending the last years of her life at the Institute of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The problems she must face are as different as they are unexpected from anything one can imagine in the 'outside' world, not the least of which is her husband's gradual deterioration under the unforgiving progression of Alzheimer's disease. As we follow the inevitable loss of her own faculties, we discover what unexpected compensations nature offers to those whom no one else can help. Surprisingly, the book is spiced with abundant humour....

The Gate: Things My Mother Told Me (paperback)