I wanted to include When Breath Becomes Air in my medical nonfiction roundup, but this memoir takes a different path and deserves its own standalone post. (After this I’ll return to non-medical topics next week, I promise!)
I came across a coffee-stained copy (I hope it’s coffee) in my neighborhood’s Little Free Library while I was dropping off a cookbook and decided to give it a chance, especially since I could drop it back there if I didn’t like it.
Instead, I spent two evenings reading and crying over this book and everything it made me feel and consider and I can’t recommend enough that you do that too, even if that sounds unappealing and although I suspect I’m the last person to discover it.
Of course I was familiar with the hype around it since its publication in 2016, after author Paul Kalanithi had already passed away. But it’s not my typical fare — nothing among the ostensible ideas covered here of death, grief, or reckoning with medical horrors appeal to me. It’s also not easy to come to terms with whether one has lived a life of meaning, especially when dealing with the exhaustion of cancer and chemotherapy and the limited time to do anything at all, and reading about that can be uncomfortable as well.
And I’m not a “misery memoir” reader — although I love reading stories of people overcoming difficult situations or life events, or doing extraordinary things in tough times. And I don’t like tearjerking-anything. I say all this to convince you that it’s worth reading even if you shy from all this too.
Considering our own mortality is always going to be a fraught subject, as is the topic of medical anomalies with the worst outcome. Which is what confronted Stanford resident and Yale-educated neurosurgeon Kalanithi, who at 36 years old, nearly finished with a decade of medical education and residency was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic lung cancer. He would have about two years to live.
In that time he had big, unimaginable decisions to make while faced with nothing but uncertainty. This was mortality making itself known, and as he points out we all know death is coming, but rarely do we face the possibility that it may be tangibly soon, when we’re so young with so many plans that suddenly have to be scrapped for entirely new ones that you never imagined having to make.
For Paul and his wife Lucy, this included deciding whether to have a child while knowing that his cancer, after another tumor appeared despite initially successful treatments, would almost certainly be fatal within a handful of years.
They moved forward with that plan anyway, and he got to meet his daughter and know that something of him will continue existing even after he’s gone. It’s a devastating moment and the words he writes to his daughter at the end of the book make me ugly cry even remembering them.
What I loved most was his honesty. With diagnoses or revelations like this, the unimportant just falls away so quickly and clearly. But to see that he still included mention of their marital difficulties before his diagnosis impressed me greatly — just that unusual level of transparency. There was no glossing over the truth; this is what it was, so he told their story truthfully.
It’s moving to see him change from doctor to patient — to having helped usher so many patients and their families through their worst nightmares of diagnoses, illness, death, as well as the triumphs of surgical successes — to becoming a patient himself.
And what makes it so incredible to read is not only his impressive intelligence and passion as he discusses his path to neurosurgery, but his joint background in medicine and English literature (he had an MA in English Lit from Stanford). He loved TS Eliot and quotes him liberally, and ties in ideas around word origin as they take on new meaning from his changed perspective. My favorite was “The root of disaster means a star coming apart, and no image expresses better the look in a patient’s eyes when hearing a neurosurgeon’s diagnosis.” I mean, my god.
There were a few elements I didn’t enjoy; for one, I had trouble following some complex reasoning around religion, but what’s even the point of discussing these things when the whole thing is so extraordinary? Just the fact of its existence humbles me. He didn’t get to finish writing it but his wife wrote a touching conclusion, as well as fulfilling her promise to get it published. It breaks my heart and is the most beautiful testament to a deep love that I can imagine.
May we all be capable of summoning the kind of grace and strength he showed in his life when we need it.
When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi (Bookshop.org)
published 2016 by Random House
Are you dancing in the streets of NYC today?
🙂
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Yes!!! Incredible! I cried and not for the reason I thought I might be crying last week. How about in Netherlands? Any celebration or just relief?
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PURE RELIEF!!
…I finally had a good night sleep!
Posted my thoughts on my blog…I want to remember this day!
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Same for me! It felt like taking a breath after holding it all week. I was so happy for one bit of wonderfully good news this year.
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I appreciate the detailed explanation! I still don’t know if I can handle the emotions. 😭
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It was tough. I’m glad that I read it and there are parts I want to reread, and ideas I want to revisit so it’s very worth it but you definitely need a loved one nearby to hug!
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Good news…long time coming!
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Okay, really? I’ve done such a good job of talking myself out of reading this book (my Mom got a similar diagnosis, out of nowhere, and was gone in a year) for many of the same reasons you state. Now you’ve gone and pushed me closer to adding it.
Absolutely outstanding review, Ren💜
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Oh Jonetta, I’m so sorry to hear you’ve gone through the pain of that too. My grandmother (she was like my mother) was diagnosed with lung cancer and gone a year later. Not the same as the shock of it happening to someone so young like here, but of course painful like nothing else. I wouldn’t have been able to read this closer to the time she passed, but now that it’s been a few years I can tentatively consider some topics like this. It gives you so much to think about, and it’s even surprisingly inspiring, in that way of “if that’s how he faced the worst news he could receive, then I can also keep trying to be brave.” You know? I promise it’s worthwhile. Sending you a hug ❤
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💜💜💜
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Great review. Great book. Thank you.
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I’m so happy you enjoyed it too! It was an emotional gut punch but I’m really glad to know this story.
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I’ve heard so many wonderful things about this book. I haven’t braved it myself yet, but am sure I will one day. Great review.
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I read this a couple of years ago and also thought it was wonderful and very moving, he came across as an amazing man.
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Didn’t he? What a loss so early. He could’ve done so much incredible work, and I would’ve loved to see how his writing developed. Still so impressed that he even managed to write this as and when he did.
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Well said! Like you, I put this off because tearjerkers are not my thing. Or at least, they’re not something I subject myself to willingly, although I would say I typically I end up enjoying a book that makes me cry. Like you, I loved the author’s honesty, his beautiful writing with fantastic literary references, and the way the book made me think.
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That’s exactly it, I don’t mind crying when I’m so moved by something and it does happen very often with books I enjoyed! But just hearing the synopsis of this made me uneasy.I’m glad I finally read it anyway though, and glad you had a similar appreciation for it! (And now that I think about it I can’t even count how many times my husband has been like “why are you crying?!” and it’s because of a book 😂)
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Haha, my husband has definitely panicked a little on multiple occasions when I was crying because of a book. He think he’s gotten more used to it now though and is more likely to realize a book is to blame if I’m both crying and holding a book 🙂
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Amazing review! I don’t know if I can read this – I tried listening to the audiobook on a plane a few years ago (worst decision ever) and made it about 15 minutes before I decided that I was going to have a panic attack if I kept listening. I’ve been sort of afraid of this book ever since, I hate hate hate thinking about mortality, but it sounds like such an important and worthwhile read that I might try again at some point… I’m not sure!!
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Ooh that does sound like a less than ideal way to read it. I also don’t like thinking about mortality but this made it more palatable somehow, which is weird because it’s such a worst-case scenario. But he focuses on what he can do, and what’s meaningful, and what are the most important things to leave behind. But you have to be in the right headspace for it too, I think!
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