The New York Times Book Review - Andrew Solomon
When Breath Becomes Air…has an aura of the best kind of earnest conversation that kept you up all night in your early adulthood—but it transcends that potential callowness with its Keatsian sense of impending mortality. Kalanithi died too soon to recant the insights that come with the gradual discovery of one's own consciousness, and his book is suffused with a proleptic nostalgia for a youth still in its efflorescence. That truncated youth is touched with youth's particular wisdom…[Kalanithi] is a literate, first-rate reporter in the vanguard of a modern battle, and he writes with the urgency of his looming incorporeity.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
…a great, indelible book…that is as intimate and illuminating as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, to cite only one recent example of a doctor's book that has had exceptionally wide appeal…I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option. There is so much here that lingers, and not just about matters of life and death…Part of this book's tremendous impact comes from the obvious fact that its author was such a brilliant polymath. And part comes from the way he conveys what happened to him—passionately working and striving, deferring gratification, waiting to live, learning to die—so well. None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: "It's just tragic enough and just imaginable enough." And just important enough to be unmissable.
Publishers Weekly
11/02/2015
Author and physician Kalanithi had nearly completed his residency in neurosurgery at Stanford when he was diagnosed with Stage lV lung cancer at the age of 36. Despite the stubborn progression of his disease, Kalanithi was able to write, work, and delve into a number of profound issues before the end of his life, documented here (his wife provides the epilogue). As a youth in Arizona, Kalanithi was unsure whether he wanted to pursue medicine, as his father did, or if literature and writing were his calling. This inspiring memoir makes it clear that he excelled at both. Kalanithi shares his career struggles, bringing readers into his studies at Yale (including cadaver dissection), the relentless demands of neurosurgery, and the life-and-death decisions and medical puzzles that must be solved. After he begins cancer treatment, Kalanithi strives to define his dual role as physician and patient, and he weighs in on such topics as what makes life meaningful and how one determines what is most important when little time is left. He also shares the challenges of colleagues: an oncologist who walks a tightrope between hope and honest reality; a fellow doctor who commits suicide after losing a patient; Kalanithi’s wife, also a doctor, bearing witness to her husband’s decline even as she gives birth to their child. This deeply moving memoir reveals how much can be achieved through service and gratitude when a life is courageously and resiliently lived. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option. . . . Part of this book’s tremendous impact comes from the obvious fact that its author was such a brilliant polymath. None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: ‘It’s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough.’ And just important enough to be unmissable.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, written as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, is inherently sad. But it’s an emotional investment well worth making: a moving and thoughtful memoir of family, medicine and literature. It is, despite its grim undertone, accidentally inspiring.”—The Washington Post
“Kalanithi uses the pages in this book to not only tell his story, but also share his ideas on how to approach death with grace and what it means to be fully alive.”—James Clear, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits
“Paul Kalanithi’s posthumous memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy. . . . The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead. . . .”—The Boston Globe
“Devastating and spectacular . . . [Kalanithi] is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it’s all heading.”—USA Today
“It’s [Kalanithi’s] unsentimental approach that makes When Breath Becomes Air so original—and so devastating. . . . Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.”—Entertainment Weekly
“[When Breath Becomes Air] split my head open with its beauty.”—Cheryl Strayed
“Rattling, heartbreaking, and ultimately beautiful, the too-young Dr. Kalanithi’s memoir is proof that the dying are the ones who have the most to teach us about life.”—Atul Gawande
“Thanks to When Breath Becomes Air, those of us who never met Paul Kalanithi will both mourn his death and benefit from his life. This is one of a handful of books I consider to be a universal donor—I would recommend it to anyone, everyone.”—Ann Patchett
“Dr. Kalanithi describes, clearly and simply, and entirely without self-pity, his journey from innocent medical student to professionally detached and all-powerful neurosurgeon to helpless patient, dying from cancer. Every doctor should read this book—written by a member of our own tribe, it helps us understand and overcome the barriers we all erect between ourselves and our patients as soon as we are out of medical school.”—Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
MARCH 2016 - AudioFile
Narrator Sunil Malhotra is faithful to the straightforward tone of Paul Kalanithi’s memoir about facing Stage IV lung cancer at age 36, just as he is finishing his training in neurosurgery. Kalanithi confronts his situation with an unflinching but literary curiosity. Malhotra adeptly delivers the author’s confusion over finding himself a confident doctor but a meek patient. He also shares Kalanithi’s youthful resistance to becoming a doctor and his contemplations about the meaning of time. What does living one day at a time mean when you don’t know how long you have? Kalanithi struggles to find an immediate way forward—should he continue to do surgery, write a book, have a baby? Cassandra Campbell narrates the epilogue by Kalanithi’s wife, recounting his final moments in a smooth, empathetic voice that is certain to bring tears. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR may be unsentimental, but it is profoundly affecting. A.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2015-09-30
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. Writing isn't brain surgery, but it's rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn't enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. "But I couldn't let go of the question," he writes, after realizing that his goals "didn't quite fit in an English department." "Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?" So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which "would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay." The author's empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. "The fact of death is unsettling," he understates. "Yet there is no other way to live." A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.
