#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the questionWhat makes a life worth living?
NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYThe New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage
Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir
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.
Paul Kalanithi discovers he has a terminal cancer in this bittersweet memoir.
I don’t usually enjoy memoirs, but I did enjoy When Breath Becomes Air. It’s a well-written novel blending together literature, philosophy, and science. While many people will focus on the author’s diagnosis, I found myself utterly fascinated by the rigors of medicine. His training and education regiment stunned me. I knew becoming a doctor took years and years of practice, but giving yourself over to the profession is mind-blowing. If you’re doctor reading my review, I want to thank you for you being you.
Of course, the heartbreaking reality of the novel is his diagnosis. It claims to be an unfinished novel, but it didn’t feel unfinished to me. It felt like one long beautiful letter to his daughter, explaining the way he lived and the way he died. The epilogue by his wife was absolutely heartbreaking. I can only imagine suffering from the grief of losing a loved one, while simultaneously celebrating the joy of bringing a loved one into the world. Where is her memoir?
tl;dr A well-written, poignant novel about a young neurosurgeon coming to terms with his life and his death.
