Oscar and the Lady in Pink: Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

‘My name is Oscar and I’m ten years old . . . They call me Egghead and I look about seven. I live in hospital because of my cancer and I’ve never written to you because I don’t even know if you exist,’ writes Oscar in a letter to God.

Oscar is ill and no one, especially not his parents, will tell him what he already knows: that he is dying. Granny Rose, the oldest of the ‘ladies in pink’ who visit Oscar and his fellow patients, makes friends with him. She suggests that he play a game: to pretend that each of the following twelve days is a decade of his imagined future. One day equals ten years, and every night Oscar writes a letter to God telling him about his life.

The ten letters that follow are sensitive, funny, heartbreaking and, ultimately, uplifting. Oscar and the Lady in Pink is a small fable with a big heart; it will change the way you feel about death, and life.