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Published Sep 2021
224 pages
Genre: Essays
Publication Information
The bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved) asks, how do you move forward with a life you didn't choose?
It's hard to give up on the feeling that the life you really want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?
Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age 35, that her body was wracked with cancer. In No Cure for Being Human, she searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of today's "best life now" advice industry, which insists on exhausting positivity and on trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. We are, she finds, as fragile as the day we were born.
With dry wit and unflinching honesty, Kate Bowler grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. She finds that we need one another if we're going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between—and there's no cure for being human.
"In heartbreaking essays, Bowler recounts lessons learned after being diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at the age of 35...Those in need of a wake-up call will find it in this breathtaking narrative." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Bowler debunks the hollow clichés that she has heard too often: to seize the day, live in the present, work on a bucket list...Like others who have suffered traumatic loss or illness—especially during the pandemic—Bowler recognizes that 'so often the experiences that define us are the ones we didn't pick.' A sensitive memoir of survival." - Kirkus Reviews
"Kate Bowler has paid through the nose with terrifying realities to become a writer of uncommon spiritual wisdom, coupled with an amazing sense of humor and a heart full of love. She fills me with hope." - Anne Lamott, author of Dusk, Night, Dawn
"Kate Bowler refuses to jump on the bandwagon of toxic positivity. Instead, she leads us to a truer truth: The work is unfinishable, and so be it. I find my interactions with the mind of Kate Bowler more useful and comforting than most all others combined." - Kelly Corrigan, author of Tell Me More, host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders and PBS's Tell Me More
"With hilarity and courage, Bowler tells her story of being diagnosed with stage-four cancer at age thirty-five, which forced her to re-examine the way she (and we) live our lives. This is a brilliant examination of what happens when everything you assumed is suddenly in question, and you have to substitute love for self-actualization and hope for certainty." - Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
This information about No Cure for Being Human was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kate Bowler is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. She completed her undergraduate degree at Macalester College, received a master's of religion from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD at Duke University. She is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, the New York Times bestselling memoir Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved, and The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities. On her popular podcast, Everything Happens, she talks with people about what they have learned in difficult times and why it is so difficult to speak frankly about suffering. She has appeared on the TED stage, NPR, and Today, and her writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, Toban, and son, Zach.
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