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sabrinas's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, Grief, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Pregnancy
Minor: Addiction, Infertility, Suicide, Blood, Excrement, Dementia, and Car accident
agnesg's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, Medical content, and Grief
Moderate: Blood and Pregnancy
flamingtashhh's review against another edition
2.0
In seriousness, I didn’t like the author at all. I cried at the end because of course death is terrible, but this was out of no love for him. He seemed to have a lot of self-importance that was tied to his work. I’m very grateful for medicine, but this kind of arrogance- that which declares medical treatment to be the greatest of all treatment, or at least doctors the best givers of care there are- is dangerous and absurd. It’s like if Jack from Lost wrote a book. I know plenty of people like this author, and none of them are happy and I wouldn’t take seriously any philosophical treatises of theirs, either.
And I’m not going to make a habit of picking apart the prose of a man writing through his last year, so I have nothing to say about the writing itself.
I actually liked the epilogue a lot, written by the author’s wife. She says there’s a lot he didn’t convey about himself and his values in the book, and honestly I really appreciated that. Her notes, and the pain and hurt in them, really gave another dimension to what would have otherwise been an uninteresting read.
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Infertility, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail
sassyshark's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Gore and Pregnancy
booksthatburn's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Child death, Death, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
Moderate: Gore, Blood, and Vomit
Minor: Forced institutionalization and Death of parent
katemariea514's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Cancer, Death, and Blood
waybeyondblue's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, and Medical content
Moderate: Blood and Medical trauma
emily_p1's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Cancer, Death, Terminal illness, and Medical content
Moderate: Gore, Blood, and Grief
Minor: Suicide and Suicide attempt
elly29's review against another edition
2.0
It's a sad thing when anyone gets cancer, and sadder still when it's someone so young and after so much work to become a neurosurgeon. I imagine working on this was cathartic, and there is a bittersweetness in this book's half-finished nature: it is unfinished because cancer cat Kalanithi's life short.
Se seemed to have spent a lot of time on his perfectionism; of course, cancer is messy and violently rips any chance at perfection, asymptotic though it may be, away. Some of his ideas were good: the relationship as vector for meaning, and that science is nothing without meaning superimposed onto it by human intellect. I liked the part about Christian religion offering mercy over justice, always, and redemption as a way to make up for falling short of being the best versions of ourselves that we can be. His final thoughts to his daughter were profoundly sweet and tender, and thank goodness for the Epilogue, which clarified much and wrapped the book up neatly.
I skipped his inclusion of details about his time in the anatomy laboratory, and some of the graphic details about surgeries.
I think Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" is a better read.
Minor: Blood
mscalls's review against another edition
3.0
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Suicide and Car accident