Review: 60 Postcards by Rachel Chadwick

Title: 60 Postcards

Published: Simon & Schuster Au April 2014

Status: Read from April 27 to 28, 2014 — I own a copy

My Thoughts:

“Before you start this book, please buy a blank postcard to use as a bookmark.”

It seemed a simple request, and it so happened I had a blank postcard in my desk drawer, so I decided to humour the author and do as she asked. Exactly why is revealed in the last pages of this touching and inspirational memoir.

Rachael Chadwick was devastated to lose her mother, Vivian, to cancer just sixteen short days after her diagnosis in 2012, and struggled through the subsequent months without her, which included the wedding of her younger sister where her mother’s absence was keenly felt. With what would have been her mother’s 60th birthday approaching, Rachael, still mired in grief, made a decision – to celebrate and honour her mother’s life in the most imaginative and creative way she could think of, and so the ’60 Postcards’ tribute was conceived. Sixty handwritten postcards bearing a simple message about her mother and Rachael’s intent, also inviting the finder to get in touch, were scattered around the city of Paris.

To share both the details of the memorial project, as well as her memories of her mother, Rachael launched a blog, 60postcards.com, in March of 2013 and it is from those posts that the much of the narrative is drawn. Rachael begins with the anniversary journey she took with a dozen friends to scatter the first 60 postcards in Paris, shares the pain of her mother’s diagnosis and her last days with her, through to the excitement of the first reply to a postcard found in Paris and the expansion of the project.

60 Postcards is a heartbreaking journey of loss and grief and an uplifting tale of love, family and friendship. Most of all, it is a daughter’s loving tribute to her mother, and you are invited to be part of it.

*Please note: I choose not to give memoirs a star rating*

The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is available to purchase from

Simon & Schuster I I Booktopia I via Booko