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Our Bodies and the Richness and Brevity of Existence
by Gabriel Weston
A profound and provocative journey through the human body from a surgeon and award-winning writer.
What does it mean to live in a body? For Gabriel Weston, there was always something missing from the anatomy she was taught at medical school. She'd forged an unconventional path, first studying humanities and getting an entry-level job in publishing, before a spark of inspiration set her on the path to becoming a doctor.
Medicine teaches us how a body functions, but it doesn't help us navigate the reality of living in one. As Weston became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, she found herself grappling with the gap between scientific knowledge and unfathomable complexity of human experience.
In this captivating exploration of the body, Weston dissolves the boundaries that usually divide surgeon and patient, pushing beyond the limit of what science has to tell us about who we are and leaning on her roots in the humanities. Focusing on our individual organs, not just under the intense spotlight of the operating theatre, but in the central role they play in the stories of our lives, a fuller and more human picture of our bodies emerges: more fragile, frightening and miraculous than we could have imagined.
Intimate, penetrating and original, Alive is about our bodies and bonds, the richness and brevity of existence, and the thread of mortality that connect us all.
"An engrossing tour of the human body...This captivates." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This bold, humane yet unsettling book makes a strong case for giving doctors more time to get to know their patients properly, and it will make you see your own body a bit differently, perhaps change how you feel in your skin." —The Guardian
"An exceptional, beautiful, and absolutely absorbing book. Gabriel Weston is one of the best writers around. It is essential reading if you own a body and should be mandatory for all those who study them." —Chris Van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People
"Alive is a delightfully uncategorizable tour de force; part meditation on anatomy and physiology, part history of medicine, part memoir. Gabriel Weston explores such varied subjects as the intricate workings of the human lung, liver transplantation, and her own heart ailment with precision and lyricism, honoring on every page what she calls 'the poetry of the body.' An informative, moving, and beautiful book." —Suzanne Koven, author of Letter to a Young Female Physician
This information about Alive 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.
Gabriel Weston is the author of Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story, which won the PEN Ackerley Prize and was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and a novel, Dirty Work. She is a medical presenter for the BBC, writes reviews for Lancet and The Telegraph, works as a part-time surgeon and lives in London with her husband and four children.
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