Wrong Rooms: A Memoir Book

Wrong Rooms is a deeply moving memoir of what it means to watch the love of your life die before your very eyes. In 1992 Mark Sanderson, a respected writer on London magazine Time Out, had an unlucky love life which had left him feeling like "a pallid, lonely Englishman". Deciding to put an advert in a lonely hearts' column, he received a reply from an Australian called Drew, "a sci-fi-loving computer nerd who told lousy jokes". Inevitably he replied, and over the next two years, they fell in love. "Drew made me happier than I had ever been before. He took me to places I never expected to see" writes Sanderson. But in April 1994 Drew was diagnosed with skin cancer. Within three months he was dead. Wrong Rooms is the emotionally raw story of Sanderson's life with Drew, from domestic bliss through sickness and finally slow, painful death. The early sections of the book honestly evoke their blossoming relationship, as well as offering a deft portrait of gay life in 90s London. Sanderson writes with a clarity and sincerity that is all the more extraordinary because of the contrast between his life before and after Drew: "we entered a grave new world of waiting rooms, consulting rooms, hospital wards and theatres. The facts that our lives had only just changed for the better made the shock even worse". In the final moments with Drew Sanderson "experienced true horror for the first time", and at times it feels almost too intimate to read on. The book is clearly a cathartic experience for Sanderson; it is also probably one of the most painfully honest books about the loss of a lover to be written in a long time. --Jerry BrottonRead More