Review – When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Memoir/Non-Fiction
Length: 231 pages
Publisher:‎ Random House
Release Date: January 12, 2016
ASIN: B00XSSYR50
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 4/5 stars

“At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook through the library.

Thoughts: I had read so many rave reviews about this book I was excited to give it read. I think my younger self would have found this to be a much more ground-breaking and intriguing read than my upper 40’s self found it. Realizing that maybe there are things more important than your career as a neurosurgeon and that working as a neurosurgeon isn’t going to teach you the meaning of life wasn’t much of a revelation to me.

This is the memoir of Paul Kalanithi who obviously is incredibly smart and comes from a well-off family (not many people can saunter off to Cambridge for the summer to get another degree really quick). He originally makes it into Stanford to study literature but eventually pivots into neurosurgery when he finds that literature isn’t helping him figure out the meaning of life. He thinks somehow being a surgeon will help him understand life and death better.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. It was intriguing to see the rather crooked path that Paul’s life took from literature to neurosurgery to writing and back and forth. I appreciated his drive to try to dig into deep topics that most people avoid. Learning some of the things he did on his path through medical training was intriguing. However, much of that comes to a halt when he is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. At that point, I got a bit confused about his drive to get back into neurosurgery again given the toll it was taking his body and how much time it was pulling him away from his family. He seemed very driven to finish his residency at this point, no matter what the cost, and that was very contrary to his thoughts about life and death during this time.

I did appreciate how Paul had to shift his viewpoint from that of a doctor to that of a patient. I wish more doctors considered their patients as people and treated them with such consideration. However, the reality of the situation is that doctors and surgeons are people too, and there is only so much people can give emotionally until they can’t give more.

The second half of the book is a bit more unfocused as Paul tried new cancer treatments and relapses. Of course, the story feels unfinished because it is. His wife does write a very well written afterward that is more thought-provoking and well written than the rest of the book.

I also was a bit surprised that there wasn’t more gratitude in this book. He is very privileged, and even on his path to death he has people to support him and access to medical care to keep him comfortable…it is so much more than a lot of people have.

My Summary (4/5): Overall there are some good parts to this book but it’s just not as insightful as I thought it would be. I enjoyed learning about Paul’s academic path and about the different treatments for cancer. I bumped this up to 4 stars because Paul seems like a great guy who was really trying to make a legacy before he died; the fact that his life was so short-lived is awful. However, this also comes off as a bit of a “why me” from a privileged person with more family support and resources than a lot of people dream of. It also comes off as of conceited at points (according to Paul he was the best neurosurgeon ever). I am sorry Paul died; is this an amazing book on the meaning of life and death? No, not really.