Author: Paul Kalanithi, Lucy Kalanithi
Published: January 12, 2016 by Random House
Format: Kindle, 208 and Pages
Genre: Memoir
Blurb: At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both—now with an epilogue by Lucy Kalanithi.
My Opinion: When Breath Becomes Air is exactly what it promises to be: a memoir written by a dying surgeon who loved learning, but loved language even more. And honestly, thank goodness for the Kindle dictionary, because Paul Kalanithi’s vocabulary is… a lot. You can feel the literature, poetry, and philosophy woven through every page; sometimes beautifully, sometimes in ways that sailed right over my head.
The book is brief, divided into the before, the during, and an epilogue written by his wife, Lucy. It’s emotional without being manipulative, heartfelt without being sentimental, and full of the kinds of messages you don’t realize you need until they’re suddenly sitting in your lap. The clinical precision of a neurosurgeon meets the vulnerability of a man trying to make sense of a life that’s ending far too soon.
I’ll admit, the more academic passages weren’t for me. But when Paul writes about his patients, his colleagues, his wife, his daughter, those moments glow. That’s where the book truly breathes. You can feel the love, the fear, the clarity, the tenderness. You can feel the man.
And yes, I know memoirs often give us the polished pieces and cast off the parts the writer wants to leave behind. I’m sure there were darker moments—anger, doubt, frustration—that didn’t make it onto the page. But if Paul chose to leave us with grace, curiosity, and a sense of a life well lived, even if cut short, I’m willing to take that as the legacy he intended.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both—now with an epilogue by Lucy Kalanithi.
My Opinion: When Breath Becomes Air is exactly what it promises to be: a memoir written by a dying surgeon who loved learning, but loved language even more. And honestly, thank goodness for the Kindle dictionary, because Paul Kalanithi’s vocabulary is… a lot. You can feel the literature, poetry, and philosophy woven through every page; sometimes beautifully, sometimes in ways that sailed right over my head.
The book is brief, divided into the before, the during, and an epilogue written by his wife, Lucy. It’s emotional without being manipulative, heartfelt without being sentimental, and full of the kinds of messages you don’t realize you need until they’re suddenly sitting in your lap. The clinical precision of a neurosurgeon meets the vulnerability of a man trying to make sense of a life that’s ending far too soon.
I’ll admit, the more academic passages weren’t for me. But when Paul writes about his patients, his colleagues, his wife, his daughter, those moments glow. That’s where the book truly breathes. You can feel the love, the fear, the clarity, the tenderness. You can feel the man.
And yes, I know memoirs often give us the polished pieces and cast off the parts the writer wants to leave behind. I’m sure there were darker moments—anger, doubt, frustration—that didn’t make it onto the page. But if Paul chose to leave us with grace, curiosity, and a sense of a life well lived, even if cut short, I’m willing to take that as the legacy he intended.
No comments:
Post a Comment