This story is truly so well written. Following along on the author's life story felt like sitting down with a family member and being told about the ups and downs of their life. I really felt connected to this story as I started my journey of chronic illness a few years ago when I was only 18. A huge thank you to the publisher for allowing me to receive an ARC of this, it is such a great book.

Jonathan Gluck shares with us his twenty year battle with cancer. his up and downs..The anxiety of living with the diagnosis the effects it has on your marriage you life.A book that is emotionally wrenching so honest so moving l’chaim to Jonathan and his wonderful brave family.#NetGalley #randomhouse

This is a memoir of the author’s life, in particularly as it relates to his diagnosis of multiple myeloma,* which is a type of blood cancer. The author is an accomplished journalist, and so he approaches it in a journalist-like manner. This is excellent at the points where he is discussing cancer and cancer therapies in general. Emperor of All Maladies is legendary, but I came out of this feeling better informed from that book due to that journalistic edge. Sometimes the tendency towards journalism hurts when the book shifts into interview-mode with some of its participants, which does not match with the rest of the book.

The other problem with the journalism is how the author comes off. I do not complain about coastal media elites as a dogwhistle. I complain about them in a Third Coast, Second City, my Daniel Burnham can beat up your Robert Moses sort of way. With travel and sport writing, complete with a fly fishing metaphor, completes my sort of utter disrespect. There is some mirror-universe review here where I write 800 words on the relevance of the author’s gender* to this writing in comparison to other similar texts. And with the valid prefatory mention of how much insurance sucks - it does - the focus here is on someone getting a high level of care, from a variety of high-skill providers in a hermetic world.

But do not listen to that me: this book rules.

The defining quality is that the author has cancer for 20 years. It has always been deleterious to his life, and he is plain and excoriating about it. But the medical advances that prolong the author’s life and quality of life are happening in real time across the course of the text. He avoids getting too philosophical with it, but he is also aware of the question that medicine raises. As much as there is a social norm of health/sickness, increasingly people live in the slash*. Most of the books I have read that dealt with this treat it as more of an ethical failing or social crisis: the bigotry against the disabled. This book is aware of it, and raises it when appropriate, but is much more interested in the materialist side. Language fails to cover what this new state is and what it means for society. This then is not a philosophical treatise on that novel-ish state, but a description of it, emotional and provocative.

The writing again belays the author’s training. It is foremost accessible, neither plain nor elaborate but what it needs to be when it needs to be to do the job of explaining that it wants to. It moves along at a good clip and the sort of sections and microchapters work well. There is excellent signaling, not foreshadowing but good work in laying the flags out for future events. The ending is weak, thankfully, as the author is alive.

My thanks to the author, Jonathan Gluck, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Rodale, Inc., for making the ARC available to me.

A thoughtful memoir about an ongoing battle with multiple myeloma that started 20 years ago. Gluck details his diagnosis and treatment but more importantly, how these affected his marriage, his children, his work, his life. That he found solace in fly fishing made so much sense-it's a struggle between a person and a fish. The language is journalistic and he avoids sentimentality while still being emotional. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

A very well written memoir that reads like a journalist wrote it. Often memoirs aren’t that well written as the writers aren’t professional authors. It immediately caught my attention that it was well written and like any good journalist the writer did their homework. Much of the narrative is his personal story but he surrounded it with his research to further provide the whole “story” on this awful disease that scientists have made so much progress towards a cure but still have a ways to go. Knowing people with multiple myeloma I am very grateful for this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I enjoyed this book, though I wouldn't adopt it for a college classroom. Nonetheless, it is an emotionally wrenching and ultimately hopeful narrative which drew me in, and I enjoyed it very much.

Journalist Jonathan Gluck has done masterful research to allow readers to explore his twenty-year journey with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood. Twenty years of biopsies and increasingly complex therapies that also, fortunately, improved in efficacy; twenty years that encompassed the Covid pandemic, dozens of bouts of insurance pre-authorizations, job insecurity, the birth and coming of age of his children, the strain of marital conflict, miracles of forgiveness and science. He pulls no punches and spares no detail. An Exercise in Uncertainty is about the most notorious of illnesses, but it is also an epic about life.

A terrifically written memoir about a long battle with cancer, waged successfully but not without cost. Author Gluck avoids the sentimentality and the bromides that so often dot an account like this one. The book is also an interesting glimpse at how cancer treatments have evolved over two decades.

Jonathan Gluck masterfully explains what it is to live in indefinite uncertainty. He takes the reader on a journey from diagnosis to treatment to remission, and then back again. At times heart wrenching and others hilarious, Jonathan’s story is one that any chronic disease patient should read!