When Breath Becomes Air

This book was heartbreaking,heartwarming, inspiring, poignant and utterly beautiful. On a unbearably hot summers day, I was utterly gripped by this story and I finished it in one sitting. This book is so important and really does give you food for thought on the matter of life and death. Paul Kalanithi was an inspirational and beautiful soul and this book is a testament to his hardworking and dignified spirit as a doctor and then as a patient with terminal cancer. I also loved the Epilogue by his wife Lucy which must have took so much courage on her behalf but which gave such a lovely and heartfelt complimentary aside to this novel. This novel really allows you to step inside the humanity of another person at their most fragile period in life. This was just such a striking and beautiful memoir and I urge everyone who cares about human goodness to read this book. It is a weeper of a book but Lucy summarises beautifully in her Epilogue the core of Paul's story which is that ‘what happened to Paul was tragic but he was not a tragedy'. Simply stunning.