When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi– 228 pages
Book Blurb:
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.
My Review: 5 stars
Reading When Breath Becomes Air has the power to deeply touch your soul. When I finished it I felt smarter, more philosophical and looked at life with a different slant.
This short book is a completely consuming memoir written during the last months of the author’s life. It’s depressing yet encouraging, poetic and profound.
Short review because there’s not much to say except it’s an exemplary piece of writing that’s both affirms and dissuades our thoughts on doctors, patients and mortality.
Quotes I liked:
“A tureen of tragedy was best allotted by the spoonful.”
-“I don’t believe in the wisdom of children, nor in the wisdom of the old. There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of the living. We are never so wise as when we live in the moment.”
– “Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world.”
-“What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy.”
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