Notas de suicidio (2022)

Title: Notas de suicidio / Publisher: La Uña Rota / City: Segovia / Year: 2022

An unexpected way to celebrate life.

This unclassifiable book is not only a reasoned summary of notes and letters written by suicides. It is also an approach to the pulse that beats beneath the extreme decision to take one’s own life. Because no note written before an accomplished suicide is written in vain.

Marc Caellas applies his ear to the chest wall of each note, like a listener, to probe the human depths of what is written there, without judging, without justifying, without extolling. And he does so from an individual and social perspective, highlighting the need to talk about suicide, in contrast to the taboo that still today silences it in both the public and private spheres.

While Simon Critchley says that we lack the language to talk about suicide, there is no doubt that there is a thought, a desire and, above all, a pain behind each of these gestures of farewell. Then, yes, we are speechless.