Book Review

It is a strange experience to pick up a book imbued with death. On lifting When Breath Becomes Air from the library shelf and reading the summary, I sensed a subtle shift in the air — or perhaps within me. I stood beneath the artificial lights, surrounded by the sounds and movements of life, grasping death in my fingers.

Unsettled but deeply intrigued, I leafed through the memoir, feeling the fragments of shattered dreams, relationships, and life permeate the pages. I paused as my eyes fell across a poem, Caelica 83 by Baron Brooke Fulke Greville, inscribed in the opening pages:

You that seek what life is in death,

Now find it air that once was breath.

New names unknown, old names gone:

Till time end bodies, but souls none.

Reader! then make time, will you be,

But steps to your eternity.

The lines beckoned to me like a sliver of light beneath a closed door. Breathless, I turned the knob, descending into the depths of meaning and mortality. Fear, sorrow, joy, confusion, peace enveloped me in waves. Can the presence of death cause such a contrast of emotions? It can, it seems. Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s life, the epitome of juxtaposition, pulled me from the heights of occupational utopia to the depths of mortal uncertainty. Yet, his words dispelled the silence of death, filling it with moving anecdotes from his personal and medical experience.

When I picked up this book, I expected a compelling but technical lecture on dying from a clinical viewpoint. But what I found transcended this presumption. I found compassion where I thought only mechanism occurred. I found hope where I thought only shadows reigned. I found a soul struggling to make sense of life’s meaning in the face of death. And is not that the story of humanity?

When Breath Becomes Air opens a window into the life of Dr. Paul Kalanithi. The son of first-generation immigrants, Kalanithi grew up in Kingman, Arizona. From an early age, his life was cluttered with nature, literature, and a burning ache for knowledge. Kalanithi’s mother, dissatisfied with the curriculum at his public high school, helped ameliorate the syllabus, a factor that aided in Kalanithi’s Stanford acceptance letter. After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English literature and a B.A. in human biology from Stanford, Kalanithi received an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. At this time, Kalanithi realized that he desired “direct experience”; “it was only in practicing medicine,” he writes, “that I could pursue a serious biological philosophy.” By pursuing a path in medicine, Kalanithi hoped to answer “the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.”

After attending Yale School of Medicine, Kalanithi entered a residency program at Stanford. During his internship, he encountered suffering and death — things he had only read about in books — first-hand. In his observations, Kalanithi guides readers through the waiting rooms and the sterilized offices, unveiling scenes of profound loss and quiet hope. Through these raw accounts, Kalanithi sets the stage for his own tragedy. He prepares readers in part one of the memoir for his wrestle with death in part two. When the results arrive, a glaring image of stage IV lung cancer, Kalanithi is under death’s shadow, grappling with his mortality through the words he weaves.

What struck me most about Kalanithi’s writing is the degree of empathy with which he conveys not only his anguish, but that of his patients. In one poignant scene, Kalanithi describes relating the option of brain surgery to a terrified patient. He acknowledges that he could have listed to her “all the risks and possible complications… [documented] her refusal in the chart,” and departed. However, in line with the resolve he made to treat his “paperwork as patients, and not vice versa,” Kalanithi gathers her and her family together, and they discuss the options. In doing this, Kalanithi writes that he “had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved.”

Conversely, while in the trenches of death, he cautions readers of the “inurement” and objectivity that can arise through this persistent confrontation. Kalanithi entered the field with noble intentions, yet, he admits, he felt at one point that he was “on the way to becoming Tolstoy’s stereotype of a doctor… focused on the rote treatment of disease — and utterly missing the larger human significance.” In the end, technical excellence is not enough. Mechanical words and statistics cannot balm the wound of fearful uncertainty; true healing lies in the relationship between doctor and patient. “Before operating on a patient’s brain, I must first understand his mind,” Kalanithi explains. By separating the physical from the mental, the tangible from the intangible, Kalanithi can recognize the patient not as an object, but as a soul, a being in possession of an “identity,” “values,” and knowledge of “what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end.” At heart, technical excellence without relationality is like a stained glass window without light. In a society that too often reduces human beings to numbers — the effect of a worldwide prosopagnosia — Kalanithi urges readers to view humanity as a group of individual beings, not a mere collection of data.

Once Kalanithi was diagnosed with cancer, his perspective on death changed. Kalanithi writes:

I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely.

Previously, as a doctor, Kalanithi saw death as the force he grappled with to attain several more grains of time. In relation to himself, like many human beings, he viewed death as inevitable but not imminent. Death’s shadow was omnipresent, but it was forgotten amidst achievement, distraction, and the sense of immortality that accompanies the two. But now, as a patient encountering the fatal presence in his own body, he felt it. He tasted it. At the pinnacle of his career, Kalanithi was greeted with his finitude.

And his response?

Finding meaning in the life that remained. To acknowledge one’s mortality is to acknowledge time’s transience. In the face of these two giants, Kalanithi searches for what is significant and what makes his life meaningful. This search results in two significant decisions: the decision to have a child and the decision to write this book.

Kalanithi explains, “If human relationality formed the bedrock of meaning, it seemed to us [he and his wife] that rearing children added another dimension to that meaning.” At heart, this line confirms one of the memoir’s underlying messages: life’s meaning is rooted in relationality. Kalanithi found value in his relationships with his patients, his family, his friends, the world, and God.

When Breath Becomes Air is both practical and deeply personal. It reads as both a guide to living well and a love letter to Kalanithi’s daughter. Death is integral to the memoir, laced between the lines and stamped in the cover Kalanithi never held. Like his life, the book was half-finished; his wife and a team of editors worked to publish it posthumously in 2016. Even so, the memoir radiates with life — as Kalanithi quotes Samuel Beckett, “birth astride of a grave.” In Kalanithi’s poignant reflections and in the promise of his child’s life, death and life compose the pages of the memoir.

When Breath Becomes Air offers readers a new perspective on mortality, an echo of memento mori, and reveals, through Kalanithi’s life experience, how to live and find meaning when breath is still breath.

 

Although of American descent, Abigail Blessing was born in Pakistan and has lived nearly all fifteen years of her life in Malaysia. From an early age, she has been intrigued by the dark and the deep dimensions of life, prompting her to take an interest in topics of art, death, isolation, and morality. When Abigail is not penning stories or essays, she takes pleasure in reading classic literature, wading through nature, playing the violin, and blogging at abigailblessing.com.

 

 

Drums, Girls + Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick centers around Steven, an eighth-grade drummer, whose younger brother has cancer.  Inspired by a past student of his, Sonnenblick set out to write a cancer story that would accurately portray the lives of families with family members who have cancer, particularly the relationship between siblings in that situation.  After reading the book, I would say he was successful in writing a story about cancer that not only let me glimpse into the lives these families may have, but also made me laugh despite the heavy subject matter, and further developed my knowledge on the importance of mental health.

Throughout the story, readers can see how Steven deals with middle school, drumming, mental health, and his brother’s cancer treatment, as well as how the people around him help him.  The aspect of Steven I loved the most was his humor.  He was very sarcastic and the majority of the humor of the book came from his light sarcasm.  Despite the tough situation, he was able to bring some light to it for his family, especially for Jeffrey, who definitely needed something to laugh about as he was only five years old.  Steven even used his sarcastic humor around his friends before he told them about his family’s new situation.

Besides Steven’s humor, I loved seeing his journey with mental health.  While at first he kept his feelings about his brother’s cancer diagnosis bottled up, it was nice to see him eventually trust people with his feelings about the difficulties of being a sibling of a cancer patient.  I personally felt that it was very realistic for Sonnenblick to not have Steven trust people right away, since I can also be reluctant to tell people when I’m having a hard time.  I liked that everyone was willing to support Steven once they realized he was struggling.

His relationship with the school counselor was one of my favorites to see develop.  At first he was hesitant to tell the counselor anything, but he soon trusted the counselor with anything that was troubling him.  With that gain of trust he was able to receive the help he needed.  His counselor definitely gave Steven wonderful advice on how to cope with a difficult situation that anyone could use.  My favorite advice that his counselor gave him was that while he can’t control everything, such as the fact that his brother has cancer, he should focus on what he can control.  That piece of advice definitely helped Steven stress out less about what he couldn’t control and I feel that anyone could benefit from focusing on what they can control, to stress out less.

Of course, the main relationship that the story focused on was that of Steven and Jeffrey.  While they did have an eight-year age difference (something that bothered Steven in the beginning of the story), they still managed to have a strong, loving relationship.  When people were being sad or concerned around Jeffrey, Steven would make sure to keep Jeffrey’s spirits up so other people’s negative energy wouldn’t bring the five-year-old down.  Not only that but Steven made sure Jeffrey didn’t feel like an outcast because of his condition.  The work Steven put into making sure Jeffrey was happy and could have a happy childhood was admirable.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a story with a heavy subject matter that isn’t as sad as other options.  People will definitely learn something about the obstacles that families have, and how they persevere when a relative has cancer —while also having some good laughs.

 

Julissa is a student at Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

 

“You must come for me, Noemí. You must save me.”

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s bestselling novel “Mexican Gothic” begins with Noemí Taboada receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin Catalina, begging for Noemí to save her from an unknown horror. Noemí heads to High Place, a dark and eerie Gothic mansion in the Mexican countryside. Little does she know what she is about to uncover.

Noemí takes the stage as an unexpected heroine. She plays a noncommittal debutant who switches her college major almost as frequently as she drops suitors. Her chic gowns and glossy lipstick appear more fit for a life of glamorous parties than a seemingly haunted mansion. But it is clear from the start of the novel that Noemí is also an intelligent, nosey woman, talented in unearthing secrets. She will do anything to protect her cousin.

She finds High Place filled with mysteries and horrors, such as the elderly patriarch who ogles her and the old cemetery in the backyard. The hostess keeps an ever-watchful eye on her, and Catalina’s husband exudes a foreboding presence. Haunting portraits decorate the walls, mold grows in corners and servants maintain a sinisterly poised composition.

In a harkening back to Shirley Jackson’s classic Haunting of Hill House, the house itself seems to have its own persona. It invades Noemí’s dreams with visions of gore and violence, and it seems to observe her every move.

The descriptions of the house as a stately Victorian manner play on Catalina’s love for romance novels such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. Catalina has found her brooding Mr. Darcy and his Gothic mansion, but can she and Noemí survive the horrors it contains?

While the family members keep Catalina under strict surveillance, Noemí’s only friend is the youngest son in the family. He appears to want to assist Noemí in recovering her cousin, but he struggles to discern where his true loyalties lie.

Many mysteries lay buried in High Place. The family’s colossal fortune was built upon the backs of miners, none of whom survived; madness and violence mar the family’s history; and no one has ever escaped the house alive.

As Noemí tries to draw out the secrets of High Place, she finds herself slowly being held captive by its daunting power. She is both haunted by and drawn to the cryptic house.

With Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia attacks the period romance genre and flips it on its head. The book’s feminist use of a heroine in a Victorian mansion is a dark parallel to the Elizabethan romances in which a wealthy estate-owning man saves the female protagonist.

In Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia writes a breath-taking thriller that can be read in a single session. She builds a mystery that the reader uncovers along with Noemí, but upon looking back, the reader can see that the explanations make perfect sense. The ending is shockingly delicious to fans of the genre and will dwell with readers for days afterwards.

 

S.G. Smith is an undergraduate student studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University. Her work has been published in The Journal and Flash Fiction Magazine, and she is the second place recipient of the university’s Jacobson Short Story Award.