Face your Fear - The Book of Regine

Reviews:

Regine Stokke: Regine's Book contains all the elements of important literature: hope and thirst for life, setbacks, frustration and dejection, friendship, love, hate and grief.

When you know you're going to die
Simply heart-rending.

Regine's Book. A young girl's last words • Author: Regine Stokke Publisher: Gyldendal

It's extraordinary. As you read Regine's Book, especially if you're a man, you catch yourself yawning constantly. This is a paradox, because there's nothing dull about it.

Cancer sufferer Regine Stokke's blog about dying is articulate and deeply philosophical, full of tension and contrasting emotion, and the photographs which accompany her words are lyrical – and impressive, particularly when you consider they've been taken by a 17-year-old.

Perhaps it's a temporary hormonal disturbance in us as individuals, but the more powerful a text, the greater the desire to yawn. This is the only legitimate explanation for the moisture that fills the eyes when Regine's Book is at its most gripping.

Blog book

There are many reasons to read this book. Some have already been mentioned. Another is purely to do with genre. Diaries about dying are already well established as a literary sub-genre. Here is one that's been written in a modern, electronic world where the blog diary is open to readers' comments. This, in turn, shapes Regine's narrative.

So the book and the blog alternate between the private and the public; Regine's thoughts and the readers' response, Regine's response to the readers, the readers' response to Regine's response and so on. And therefore you can't help wondering what will happen when this book becomes available on iPad. Reminiscent of a blog in tone, it will return to its original form. The difference will be that the reader's comment field will be closed to further thoughts and Regine can't write any more. Less than eighteen months after she was diagnosed with acute leukaemia in August 2008, she died.

Big contrasts

It's probably not the appeal of the book's genre that has turned it into a bestseller. Regine's Book contains all the elements of important literature: hope and thirst for life, setbacks, frustration and dejection, friendship, love, hate, grief, existential questions like "Are people more frightened of women without hair?" and sardonic humour: "I'd really like to know which pills they were, because I went into fits of laughter after taking them. I had no reason to laugh. I could do with more of those pills."

People die all the time in novels, but the impact it has on us is only limited. We know that, as in films, the main characters get up again afterwards and consume a rich and sumptuous lunch in their trailers, before moving on to their next novel or film. Not young Regine Stokke from Kristiansund. She's spoken her last line.

Stian Bromark in DAGBLADET