Title: To Be A Rose
Author: E.B. Mason
Publisher: ARPress
ISBN: 979-8-89389-435-6
Pages: 158
Genre: Memoir
Reviewer: Gabriella Harrison

Read Book Review

To Be A Rose isn’t an easy book to pin down, which is probably what makes it linger. It’s part war memoir, part near-death account, part dreamlike meditation on survival. Author E.B. Mason writes from the aftermath of something most people don’t come back from, and you can feel that in every line – he’s not trying to craft an inspiring arc or a polished narrative. He’s trying to tell you what it was like.

The first part of the book plants you in Kabul, and not the version we see in headlines. It’s loud, layered, choking. Mason’s descriptions are heavy with sensory detail – the “acrid smoke from the grills,” the grime in the air, the heat that clings. But it’s the offhanded brutality of his observations that stop you short. He mentions, almost clinically, that a percentage of what’s floating in the air is “the dust from dried fecal matter or the remains of dead animals or people.” That kind of line doesn’t just land – it haunts. And then, his body fails him. One moment, he’s pushing through the day. The next, he’s fighting for breath, “I can’t breathe. I can’t complete a sentence…without taking a breath.” The urgency in those moments is real – and raw.

From there, the book dissolves into something harder to describe. Mason spends eight weeks in a coma, and what we get are fragments, flashes. German nurses repeating “Nicht Schlafen.” (Don’t sleep). A city of roses. A sentence that lands like a riddle or a revelation: “You have been weighed in the balance, and you are welcome.” Some of these coma sequences feel like metaphors; others just feel like memory folding in on itself. They’re not tidy, and they’re not always clear. But in a strange way, that works. This part of the book isn’t about clarity about proximity to the edge of something unknowable.

There are moments of levity, surprisingly. Some of them are grotesque. One in particular, about an elephant with digestive issues, is so bizarre it almost tips into absurdist comedy. But somehow, it doesn’t feel out of place. Mason’s humor is dry, and sometimes bitter, but it’s the kind of humor which comes from someone who’s seen too much to pretend otherwise. Even when he’s writing about something as awkward and painful as catheter removal, he just says it: “I would have preferred to have been shot.” You wince, but you also laugh, because there’s truth in it – and no performance.

What I appreciated most is that this isn’t a memoir pretending to wrap anything up. It’s more like sitting with someone who’s been through something impossible, and they’re doing their best to explain it, even though the words fall short. It’s not a survival story in the traditional sense. It’s a look at what it means to lose your body, to slip in and out of consciousness, and to come back changed in ways you can’t quite explain.

This book won’t be for everyone. Some will find the coma chapters disorienting. Others might want a clearer takeaway. But for readers open to ambiguity, and to the strange places the mind can go when the body shuts down, To Be A Rose by E.B. Mason offers something rare: a glimpse at what happens when all the walls fall away, and you’re left with whatever’s left of you.

E.B. Mason’s To Be A Rose is one of those rare memoirs that makes you laugh, pause, and feel slightly winded – sometimes all on the same page. It’s raw and strange and unexpectedly moving, but what surprised me most was the humor tucked into some of its darkest corners. It reads like someone recounting a story not for applause, but because it’s the only way to process everything they’ve been through.  To Be A Rose by E.B. Mason is a powerful story of personal growth, love, and finding strength in unexpected places.