Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir by Rodge Glass review: 'processing grief by processing texts'

This is a brave, original and ultimately devastating attempt to unravel life’s complexities, writes David Robinson

Rodge Glass | Alan Dimmick

Sometimes - usually, in fact - a nosebleed is just a nosebleed. Embarrassing, awkward, messy, ordinary, normal. But for the 1.4 million people in the world with HHT, there is always a chance that it may be a harbinger of something far, far worse.

If, like me, you had never heard of HHT, or Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia as nobody but a doctor will ever call it, you’re in good company. Before 2017, when his nephew Joshua was born, that was not only Rodge Glass but all his family too. 

Often – as with Joshua’s father (and Glass’s brother) - there may be no outward sign that one is a carrier of HHT. But Glass has had nosebleeds all his life. And because he never went to the doctor to check out why, he is consumed by guilt. Because when his nephew was born, the abnormal formation of blood vessels in his lungs caused by HHT meant that he couldn’t breathe. Three hours after he was born, Joshua died.

This book is Glass’s attempt to come to terms with that tragedy, and to memorialise a life every bit as small as that of Alasdair Gray (for whom he worked for a couple of years as an amanuensis and, later, biographer) was large. It is also, of course, a stark warning about the need for greater awareness of the dangers of HHT, even among doctors.

His brother says he can’t imagine why Glass continues to feel guilty. So does the crew of an ambulance called out when he has a bad asthma attack. So too does the reader: why should anyone persist in blaming himself for not acting on something he didn’t know? Logic doesn’t come into it. 

Reading, however, does. It is, he says, the only thing apart from his two beloved daughters that gives him peace, that sustains him, that allows him to process reality. He’s always been like that, he says, self-mockingly: the overthinking klutz who nearly gets run down while crossing the road with his head in a book, who travels across Latin America reading what its writers have written about their countries rather than looking out of the window. 

For such a writer, processing grief is a matter of processing texts – hardly any of them obvious choices –  weaving them around his everyday life: an escalating row with his neighbours, memories of past loves, schooldays, travels, rebellious thoughts about Jewishness. He is, he says,“trying to make a tragedy read like a story which is not dominated by tragedy. Not just a story of loss.” It’s a brave, original and – particularly in the final chapter - devastating attempt to unravel life’s complexities, but the gravitational pull of grief is just too strong.

Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir, by Rodge Glass, Taproot Press, £11.99