When Breath Becomes Air

Nopes... I haven't finished my second book of the year already. But I had read this while I was traveling in last November and I remembered that this book of all deserves to be here as a review. To be honest, I was skeptical about picking this up because I had heard that it has a lot of medical jargon and I wondered whether I would even be able to get a hang of it. Also, this is supposed to be an autobiography and I am just not a non-fiction person. But, I did pick it up even if out of curiosity around what is in it to generate such hype and have amazing reviews.

For start, it was an easy read. There were all those medical terms but I had kind of blocked my mind from delving too much over them. Moreover, it helped that it was gripping right from the word 'go'. The writing is actually pretty neat, thoughtful and well structured. So much so that I felt that Paul was not wrong in thinking about career options in literature though he didn't pursue them until this book.

Unlike some of the reviews, I didn't really find it heavy. I didn't shed a single tear and believe-you-me I shed tears on snaps. So, I don't know why most of the readers say that it's heart-breaking. I mean, the book is an auto-biographical account by a terminally ill person so the scenario is heart-breaking but other than that, I did not think it was a sob-story. In fact, I had an image of Paul as someone very optimistic and a happy person to be describing his life so beautifully even while on death-bed.

I found the climax abrupt but to be fair to the person, his death was too sudden and that's how the story ends. And then one thinks that is exactly how fragile life is. For me though the best part of the book was how Paul sheds light on the patient-doctor relationship in a deep and humane manner. And the rest was all about transition of this person from leading a normal life with the eventuality of death only at the back of your head to a life where that eventuality is in the foreground of everything you do. Under the same shadow of a meaningful life, Paul comes to the conclusion that suffering and striving are the main components of a meaningful life.

#WhenBreathBecomesAir

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