If the Spirit Moves You

More about the book

Justine Picardie is a journalist and the sister of Ruth Picardie who died in August 1997. Before she died, Ruth wrote a series of columns about her illness which were then published as the bestselling book, Before I Say Goodbye. Now Justine Picardie is writing her own book, the story of life after death and, literally, the story of her own life after her sister's death. Told in a way which explores the different ways that we now conceive the afterlife, in what is supposed to be an age of reason, of scepticism, of science, yet where gaping holes still remain. It is a book about how we fill the space that appears when someone dies; or how the space fills itself. It is a book about love and hope, as well as death. Filled with significant characters from Justine's life (her Jewish, Oxford don father who has suffered from mental illness; her Anglo-Catholic mother who became a therapist; her dead grandfather, a Lithuanian Jew who escaped the holocaust and later became a spiritualist and a regular client at seances; her husband, the voice of reason; her two sons (Justtine's reason to live when she wanted to be dead); her friend Kimberly, who killed herself five years ago but believed that