Love You So Much: a shared memoir

Victoria Zacheis Greve & Karen Greve Young
Summertime Publishing: £13.95

When Karen Greve Young’s mother was diagnosed with late stage ovarian cancer in the spring of 1999, Karen and Vicki decided to write a memoir to help them focus on something other than just the disease.

Love You So Much is the newly published tribute to Vicki Greve seven years after she lost her battle for life, but not before she’d fought and won four and half ‘bonus years’ that saw her witness both her children get married.

Sadly Vicki died only a few months before the birth of her much longed-for first grandchild.

During Vicki’s illness, Karen found herself posted to London for work, and their memoir charts the difficulties and stresses that mother, daughter and the rest of the family experienced living so far apart and in different time zones, at such an emotionally traumatic time in all their lives.

Parts of the book are written by Karen and Vicki individually and the gaps are filled in with the emails they wrote to each other during this time and detailing Vicki’s diagnoses, treatments and of course the inevitable symptoms associated with ovarian cancer.

Love You So Much does not gloss over the many unpleasant bits of the disease, but it is informative and Karen was clearly determined to research and investigate all aspects of Vicki’s condition in order to get her the best and most effective treatments on offer, even if it meant questioning the decisions of her mother’s doctors.

But it’s not all doom and gloom and the passage of normal family life permeates throughout including some lovely anecdotes about Vicki's trips to London to see her daughter and their shared passion for Afternoon Teas in posh London hotels.

Love You So Much is a well-written and moving account of Vicki and Karen’s relationship, and a fitting legacy to a woman who was clearly a wonderful wife and mother.

Shelley Antscherl
shelleydutchnews@me.com