'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi
'When Breath Becomes Air' by Paul Kalanithi

The good

  • Beautiful writing.

  • Covers some very powerful themes and ideas, especially around life and death and the monumental responsibilities we give to doctors of protecting life (and in the case of neurosurgeons, even protecting a person’s mind and their very identity). Hard to imagine your day to day job including decisions like whether to operate on a patient or not (e.g., risk a C section or risk the baby dying from complications) and what parts of a brain are OK to remove (e.g., if you remove certain parts of the brain, the patient may lose the ability to speak, or even understand language at all).

  • Fascinating to learn about all the work and training it takes to become a doctor, and especially a neurosurgeon. Even more fascinating to learn about how much of it is about dealing with humanity and psychology rather than biology. A surgeon must not only be proficient in the technical abilities required by surgery, but also in helping the patient understand what’s happening, cope with what’s happening, find meaning in life despite knowing that there’s a looming threat of it ending.

  • A deep look at how a doctor, who has tried to help his own patients deal with death, deals with his own terminal illness. Occasionally hard to read, occasionally beautiful and moving.

The not so good

  • The discussion of religion and soul felt out of place and incongruous for this story, that was otherwise so focused on humanity, biology, psychology, etc.

  • An unfinished story. This is, of course, somewhat the point, as the author passed away before he could finish writing. In some ways, it makes the book all the more tragic, but it does feel incomplete, cut off just as it started to get interesting.

Rating: 4 stars