🩺Book : When Breath Becomes Air
🩺Author : Paul Kalanithi
🩺Genre : Memoir
🩺Pages : 225
🩺Publication: 2016, Penguin Random House
🩺Format : Hardback
🩺Book Cost : ₹599 (bought for ₹532.75)

Blogpost by Dhanu

4.8 /5

Before getting into my view of this particular book, I want to express my gratefulness towards my self-sufficient human body for healing and carrying me everywhere towards this limited endeavoring days on this bumpy road. And my huge respect to Paul Kalanithi, the author, for his withstand heart throughout the hardships between life and death. It is hard to describe how we are feeling while we, ourselves, are enduring the distress. But this man’s description made us to feel the pain that he had endured. The way he strives his demise and stability in the midst of his ticking minutes to withstand throughout his dreadful last days. Each sentence visualizes the extent of his sufferings and generous heart for serving people even when he had undergone his chemotherapy and other medications for his deadly lung cancer.

The book begins with the narration of the writer, Paul himself. His narration directs the readers towards the rays of hope even for someone in the verge of struggling for their life. Paul narrates each stage of his life right from his early years to the last stage of his life. His life entirely turned upside-down from being a doctor and saving other lives to being diagnosed with lung cancer and treated by his medical colleagues.

One can comprehend the pain of someone when one begins to visualize the grief from the perspectives of the particular person. Paul had the empathy as being a patient in the hospital where he had been successfully carried out hundreds of surgeries and gave the bitter assurances for his dying patients.

I was persuaded to buy the book after learning about it, but I kept postponing to read it. As usual, the book picked me in right time. I read this book in the time when I was in the low tide period of my life and as usual books are always the lifeguards to save us from drowning into the endless sea of distress.

Even as a memoir, my first time experience as reading memoir, I was able to get the flow of writing style which is quite simple for everyone. The lucidity of the entire narration grabs the events and maintained the coherence of the narration. Paul has crystal clear picture of his life and disregards the negligible and detailed description of events. Even though the book is brief, it exhorts us to live our life to the fullest.

I highly highly recommend this book for everyone to understand the value of life.

Happy Reading