The epilogue of things fantastic, but I found the remainder of the book somewhat self-indulgent if I’m honest.

Difficult to read at time but compelling. The detailed descriptions of brain surgery were highly interesting and the overall book was well written.

Not my normal choice for a book on the train and so glad I went for it. Searingly honest and incredibly moving I had to choke back my emotions. Not only honest, it is educational and encourages you to look at your own mortality and face the truth and I mean that in the most positive of ways.

This beautifully written memoir of the life and death of Paul Kalanithi was much more than I’d expected. Yes, it’s about living with and dying of cancer, yes it’s about death in the context of modern medicine. But it’s also about poetry, and faith, and marriage and family and vocation.

I flew through reading this, despite initially finding some of the early sections on philosophy, neurosurgery and lots more a little more dry and academic than I’d expected. However the final third, which is increasingly emotional and profound clearly builds on those earlier foundations and I want to go back and re-read them more fully.

Reading this book felt like an enormous privilege.

Books about cancer aren’t generally my jam. I’d have given this one a similarly wide berth if it wasn’t for the fact that I had read a little about the author and his story on A Cup of Jo, a blog I read every now and again. Paul Kalinithi was a brilliant neurosurgeon completing his residency when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This book was written in the last year of his life, as he succumbed to the disease, and it is absolutely not the book that you expect it to be. It’s a frank and unflinching look at the reality of death, and yet it’s completely uplifting in a way that you just wouldn’t imagine it could be. It was finished by his wife Lucy, who wrote a touching and moving epilogue that moved me to tears. I can’t recommend this book highly enough; it’s just wonderful.

A description of the process of dying, written by a dying man, with all the medical knowledge needed to catalogue every detail, ought to be depressing. But this isn't at all depressing. It is -- in an odd way -- reassuring and deeply human.

Heartbreaking, hopeful, insightful and inspiring. “The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of their own existence.” Isn’t this what you would want in a surgeon?

Really enjoyed this book - a different perspective and a compelling read. Became engrossed in it really very quickly!

Absolutely fascinating insight into the world of brain surgery. Very emotionally honest and down to earth

This memoir is very popular and won the Goodreads 2016 Choice Awards for Memoir & Autobiography. I am sure you have heard about it but you really need to read it to appreciate it. This is the memoir written by Paul Kalanithi, a trainee Nuero surgeon and to be the best in his field. He was very near the end of his training when at 36 years of age he diagnosed with Lung Cancer! The type of lung cancer Paul had been inoperable and the only way to prolong his life would be chemotherapy. This is his story of the man who saves people’s lives,the man who has to appear confident and strong for his patients and then his world is flipped to where he is now the patient and he needs to try to remove his doctors head and let someone else take control. After being diagnosed he starts to write this memoir searching for the meaning of life, this book was written in the last year of Paul’s life and was finished by his wife due to the quick progression of his cancer. This was an extremely well written book, hard-hitting and raw. It has such insight into the way he is feeling physically and mentally all the way through until his final words. I thought this book was amazing but also triggered some anxiety for me, the feeling of being close to death was described, the finality of life was shown and it’s scary but it needed to be told and for that I am grateful.

I did enjoy this, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted. I do understand the circumstances of the author’s life and death, and I’m sure that’s the reason for the issues with the book. I was hoping for more depth, more insight, an understanding of what it might be like to face death.

"Even if you are perfect, the world isn't."


"The days are long, but the years are short."



This book is so much in its 200 pages that i don't even know where to start trying to explain this book.

Paul -because after reading this book there is nothing else you can call him, you feel so connect to him, the life he had, as if we became part of his family, as if he invited us into his inner circle of trusted friends, to share is thoughts with- and his story are not necessarily unique but the way he tells it defiantly is.

He talks about so much: his love for literature in all ways -be it books themselves, the stories they tell or the messages authors might try to tell through them- or his endless thirst for understanding the brain -how it works, how it functions, how and why and what????- his love for learning, understanding aspiring to be good, great and do good, his best.
He shares his love for his family, his friends and his field of work, but also his doubts about it all.

"where did biology, morality, literature, and philosophy intersect?"


I think one of the biggest things that made me instantly connect with him as a person was his fascination with death and trying to understand it.

Not in the "why is death/why do we have to die?" way but in the "what is death? What does it mean, how does it work, what does it involve, why do we fear it so much even thought we all know its coming?" kind of way. The way of just wanting to learn, and maybe understand it better.
Not out of a morbid fascination -or maybe not just because of that i guess depending on how you see it yourself- but because its something unavoidable and clearly such a big part of life. But at the same time, what do we actually know about it?
How come big life changing things have to happen to us before we actually appreciate life as we knew it before?
What is it about looking "death into the eye" that makes us change our life into something different instead of doing it right away?

There are so many questions Paul asks, that i have wanted answers to as well for so long.
And he doesn't give answers.
He couldn't, no matter how hard he might have tried, since really how could anyone?

But it was nice to see it in a book, reading about another person struggling with connecting different areas of humanity that so many people try almost desperately to separate and seeing him trying to connect the two.

At the same time he shares his journey through medicine, from his childhood where he grew up with a doctor as a father that wasn't home as often as he wished his father to be home and the firm believe that he himself-Paul- would never become a doctor because he didn't want his own children to grow up the same way -wishing he would be home more instead of tending to patients, through to understanding that if he wanted to learn and understand more of what he found so interesting he would have to become a doctor, to the moment he completely fell in love not only with the field of medicine but also accepting the hardships that come with that and accepting those as a trade to finding something he loved doing.

And of course he talks about his illness and how it is killing him and how that changes his life in every way.
And that was the other part that made me feel almost to connect to his story.
The way he talks about becoming sick, being ill, how the world sees you, how it changes you, how its a struggle in so many more ways that you can't understand until you go through it no matter how hard to try to understand before.
He is honest about sickness, honest about what it feels like to loose control of your own body in many ways the most people -thankfully to them- will never have to face in their lives.
How horrifying that can be- but also eye opening.
How you learn to pretend to be okay with it, until someday you notice... maybe its actually okay, that its okay. That is doable. different, but doable.
I think its one of the best descriptions of illness that i have read so far -and i have read a good number of books on the topic since i am not that much different than Paul himself was in the way that if i try to understand what i personally am going through i try to find the books about it, just like Paul tried too.

Thankfully i have his book now as a reminder that there are author people out there that understand -even if that mind sound strange or once again morbid to some people. If you are struggling through an illness, its very isolating, its lonely even if you are surrounded by people that love you and support you and help you as best as they can. You feel alone and as if you are the only one going through it. Which is not at all the case, but this book and Paul himself, i think, manages to really drive that home. And give another sick person the feeling that "look, you are not alone, and your thoughts and feeling and struggles, especially those that you are NOT saying out loud to your family members are NOT just your struggles, thoughts and feelings." and i really appreciated that.

"Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life-shattering.
it felt less like an epiphany - piercing burst of light, illuminating what really matters - and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward."



This book is honest and raw and leaves you feeling a little broken.

But also happier that you went through it, that you got to meet Paul, take a walk along him for a little while and will remember him for a while after finishing this book.

And i am glad i read this book now, just as i am glad that i waited until now to read it.

This is not a book you can just pick up any time and just read it.
I don't think so at least.
Not because its not a good read, but because its not the type of book that allows for you to just fly through it and forget about it.

I am so happy that Paul, his wife, daughter and family have this book and gave it to the world to read as well.

I am very happy i read it and spend the hours with it.
And i already know that i will re-visit this book quiet often in the future.
And even though i very rarely or even ever say this to or about a book: I am truly thankful to have had this experience and had the change to read this book.

what a brilliant book. such a moving story and one everyone should read

Paul had just completed his training to be a neurosurgeon before his untimely death of lung cancer. He left behind his wife and a 9 month old daughter.

This account documents his life and career (I'm impressed by his breadth of knowledge - a true polymath) and then charts his illness from diagnosis to death. He didn't finish his book (according to the epilogue from his wife) although I thought it neatly rounded off when his writing in the past tense reverts to the present and the fitting words he writes to his daughter.

This is of course a sad story, but it is beautifully written.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Won't lie, parts of this short novel were a bit hard. My father died of cancer. Cancer that started in the lungs and metastasis to the brain. When I read Kalanithi's words about fatalities of that type of brain cancer...well...it was a like a punch to my stomach.

I was a bit gobsmacked at times reading this. I mean, when we are talking about brain surgery a mm can mean life or death, functional or nonfunctional. I just can't even imagine the skill it must take. I found most fascinating Kalanithi's reasons for choosing this field. The concept of our minds and actions just being a byproduct of our brains...well, that might seem simple in concept but I still find the entire concept too all encompassing to grasp.

I hate what happened to Kalanithi and his family. What they went through, I mean, how could anyone not? I would have loved to read a b by book by Kalanithi that wasn't sure to end the way it did. I found his subject matter and how he discussed his cases and brain surgery fascinating. I wonder if he would have been a different type of writer had he not had cancer. Was his writing style and his refections modified because of his diagnosis? Did his future make him more humane? Please, understand, I'm not trying to imply that he was anything but compassionate before...I...well...maybe I am kinda wondering if he was less compassionate before....not by a conscious meaning to be...but just by the circumstances of that type of work. Of any type of work really.

If any of us were to sit down and write about ourselves and our current path, wouldn't it be different than the words we were to write if we knew our death was imminent.

I'm glad I read this book. It gave me so much to think about. It offered insights I'm not sure I've had before...but I would have loved to read a different type of book by Paul Kalanithi as well...for so many various reasons...

Review copy provided by Netgalley for an honest review

I found this book amazingly well written and beautiful, but I found it too emotional to read at this time in my life and I couldn't bring myself to finish it and therefore don't feel I can review it fairly as I have not been able to finish it.

An absolutely fantastic story of what it means to be alive and human despite the subject matter. It reminded me of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in that the fact that it has been published posthumously gives it an air of melancholy, but it didn't feel like a depressing book.

A life affirming memoir. Powerful, emotional and moving.

This book made me feel a whole range of emotions. Read in one sitting as I was completely overwhelmed by the author's writing, I felt like I had known him. A book everyone should read if they really want to look at the things that make life worth living.

A beautifully honest account of life and how it can throw the most awful curve ball - it will make you cry and smile