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A review by shoelessmama
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0
In writing this review I mean no offense to books written about mortality by those who are faced by theirs. The poignancy is hard to replicate in a book not written by someone who has passed on by the time it's published. However, I found this book more impactful in the amount of things it made me think about.
**Update**
On this re-read I agree with what I previously said about this book, little though it was. There were two other books on mortality that I had read around that time, "The Last Lecture" and "When Breath Becomes Air", and I think what I was trying to say without coming right out and saying it is that those two books impacted me more emotionally than this one. I can only assume that that is due to the authors of those books being faced with their own mortality. In this case he dealt with patients mortality and family members and while aging, disease, and mortality were discussed in a very thought-provoking way it's just not the same. I've since read two other books about daughters facing their mothers deaths (Crying in H Mart & Dancing At the Pity Party). I absolutely loved both of those, but not being by doctors they were less clinical and more personal. I appreciate this author personalizing his topic where he could but the strength of this book was more in looking at how we as a society can better deal with death, aging, and terminal illness. This book offers more knowledge and the others offer more heart.
I re-read this for book club and I think this book should make for a very interesting discussion.
**Update**
On this re-read I agree with what I previously said about this book, little though it was. There were two other books on mortality that I had read around that time, "The Last Lecture" and "When Breath Becomes Air", and I think what I was trying to say without coming right out and saying it is that those two books impacted me more emotionally than this one. I can only assume that that is due to the authors of those books being faced with their own mortality. In this case he dealt with patients mortality and family members and while aging, disease, and mortality were discussed in a very thought-provoking way it's just not the same. I've since read two other books about daughters facing their mothers deaths (Crying in H Mart & Dancing At the Pity Party). I absolutely loved both of those, but not being by doctors they were less clinical and more personal. I appreciate this author personalizing his topic where he could but the strength of this book was more in looking at how we as a society can better deal with death, aging, and terminal illness. This book offers more knowledge and the others offer more heart.
I re-read this for book club and I think this book should make for a very interesting discussion.