When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi · 2016
A neurosurgeon diagnosed with terminal cancer writes about what makes life meaningful. He died before finishing it. His wife wrote the epilogue.
The case against
Unfinished, and you feel it: the second half thins as Kalanithi weakens, the borrowed literary quotations bear more weight than the connective prose can, and the book stops rather than ends. Before the diagnosis, a long stretch reads as a brilliant resident's CV in narrative form. Lucy's epilogue outwrites much of what precedes it, which nobody wanted to be true.
Memoir · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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