NOVEMBER 2015 - AudioFile
This collection of four beautiful essays, published in the NEW YORK TIMES shortly before Oliver Sacks’s death, feels like a last, parting gift from Sacks to listeners. In “Mercury,” “My Own Life,” “My Periodic Table,” and “Sabbath,” Sacks looks back over his long and accomplished life and faces his own mortality. More than anything, he’s still filled with wonder at the world. Dan Woren, who also narrated Sacks’s memoir, ON THE MOVE, reads in a firm and clear voice. One might wish for a slightly more intimate and personal tone, or for him to linger a bit over Sacks’s turns of phrase, to better allow listeners to contemplate them. Nonetheless, Sacks’s message resonates, rewarding multiple listens. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
A series of heart-rending yet ultimately uplifting essays….A lasting gift to readers….unlike other writers who have reported from the front lines of mortality, Sacks did not focus on his illness, his medical ordeal or spirituality, but on “what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life—achieving a sense of peace within oneself. Sacks not only achieved that peace but managed to convey it beautifully in these essays. He found positive ways to think about everything, including his growing frailty: Perhaps, he suggests in the book’s final pages, he was in the Sabbath of his life, “when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.” His tender book leaves readers with a similar sense of tranquility and, indeed, gratitude.” —Heller McAlpin, Washington Post
“Elegant….a lovely slim volume.” —Melissa Dahl, New York Magazine
“Powerful….The book chronicles the famous author’s thoughts, wishes, regrets, and, above all, feelings of love, happiness, and gratitude even as he faced the cancer that ended his life last year at 82….the material offers incisive, poignant observations….A perfect gift for thoughtful readers, and a title that belongs in science and biography collections.” —Library Journal, *starred review*
“The neurologist and author died of cancer in August. Between 2013 and 2015, he wrote four moving essays, published in The New York Times, reflecting on his life and facing mortality. They are collected in this slim volume, a coda to Sacks’ remarkable career.” —Tom Beer, Newsday
“A book defined by celebration, not sadness.” —Danny Heitman, The Advocate
“This is a worthy little chapbook for the lovers of Oliver Sacks.” —Edith Cody-Rice, The Millstone
“The volume is tiny—short enough to read easily in one sitting—but it’s huge in heart. Oliver Sack’s just-published book “Gratitude,” consists of four essays the famous neurologist and chronicler of human quirks wrote in the months before his death of cancer this summer at 82. It is, in effect, a mini-memoir, a beautiful meditation on what it means to live a good life.” —Sydney Trent, Washington Post
“In these four graceful essays written in the two years before he died, Oliver Sacks looks at life, old age — and death, square in the eye….First published individually in the New York Times, together these pieces form a wise and profound quartet.” —Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Gratitude is a bittersweet and absolutely beautiful read in its entirety.” —Maria Popova, Brainpickings.org
“A humane look at his own life, and death, told with good humor, acceptance, and that charming gratitude that had such a strong hold on him. If you know his writings, this will bring them to a thoughtful and enlightened conclusion; if you do not, the little book is a not just a farewell but will do for a grand introduction.” —The Dispatch
Library Journal
★ 01/01/2016
Sacks's (Awakenings; The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) powerful look back at his remarkable life was published posthumously. The book chronicles the famous author's thoughts, wishes, regrets, and, above all, feelings of love, happiness, and gratitude even as he faced the cancer that ended his life last year at 82. In essays that originally appeared in print in the New York Times, Sacks relates what makes him happy—simply to be alive on a beautiful day, for example—as well as what causes him sadness as he ages. He considers people he has known and loved and how they approached death and candidly discusses his feelings upon learning that his cancer had metastasized and was terminal. Surprisingly, the writings feature themes related to physics rather than biology, with Sacks explaining that "Times of stress…have led me to turn, or to return, to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death." While the book shows no dimming of intellect—indeed, the material offers incisive, poignant observations—the author's usual scientific narrative has in places been supplanted by wistful musings on life and love. The essays also tie up the strands of a career spent investigating and writing, mentioning various projects, mentors, and books along the way. VERDICT A perfect gift for thoughtful readers, and a title that belongs in science and biography collections.—Henrietta Verma, formerly with Library Journal
NOVEMBER 2015 - AudioFile
This collection of four beautiful essays, published in the NEW YORK TIMES shortly before Oliver Sacks’s death, feels like a last, parting gift from Sacks to listeners. In “Mercury,” “My Own Life,” “My Periodic Table,” and “Sabbath,” Sacks looks back over his long and accomplished life and faces his own mortality. More than anything, he’s still filled with wonder at the world. Dan Woren, who also narrated Sacks’s memoir, ON THE MOVE, reads in a firm and clear voice. One might wish for a slightly more intimate and personal tone, or for him to linger a bit over Sacks’s turns of phrase, to better allow listeners to contemplate them. Nonetheless, Sacks’s message resonates, rewarding multiple listens. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2015-11-01
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.). In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see "a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences," as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium's "intense, murderous radioactivity," then perhaps 84 isn't all that it's cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne's call to revel in "intercourse with the world"—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens' last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to "see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts." If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn't seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.
