To stare death in the face and document each step you take as your life ebbs away is no small feat. Dr. Paul Kalanithi gives us a short memoir of his journey to finding his purpose in life, even when death cuts his life short. While the book doesn’t seem to have a distinct purpose, I almost feel that’s what made this so powerful.The book seems to be divided into three parts. The first is his journey to deciding what he wants to do with his life and where he wants to go to college. He learns during high school that he is interested in literature and a branch of literature that analyzes what makes us tick, particularly what makes us human, aka our mind.
The second part of the memoir then focuses on his collegiate years where he studies literature at Standford and ultimately receives his master’s in literature. However, at this point, he’s learned that it’s not so much the mind that he wants to study, but the brain and the science that makes it run. So he abandons the humanities and takes up medicine, particularly a neurosurgery.
The last part is him wrapping up his residency and suddenly being faced with cancer. This last part stops the autobiography-style of the book and it switches to a memoir focused on his fight to survive.
While I found this abrupt switch hard to adjust to, I asked myself, If I were facing my imminent demise would I be able to maintain a clear, concise narrative? Wouldn’t my purpose alter at each new step particularly as cancer ravages my body? And I answered yes. That sometimes life doesn’t give us a nice linear journey to write about. Life likes to throw us curve balls bending and twisting our life journey. Based just on end-of-life memoir I think this is a must read. Not for its craft but the chutzpah it takes to take on death, a topic we shy from in our sanitary world.
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