Published By: Jonathan Cape
Pages: 304
Released On: 06/03/2025
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. Medicine teaches us how a body functions, but it doesn’t help us navigate the reality of living in one. As she became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, Weston 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. 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.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Jonathan Cape for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I love a medical book, not in a weird morbid way. But ever since I became ill, I’ve become more fascinated with the world of health, and so when this dropped into my inbox, it felt right up my street.
I’m the kind of person who loves watching those surgery programmes where you watch people being operated on. It’s fascinating. And I’m always amazed when I think that, apart from being much smarter than I am, a surgeon is no different to myself, just they took a science/medical route whereas I took media, but they can stop a heart, drain a person of all their blood, but keep them alive. It’s humbling.
This isn’t an easy book to read. I mean, the introductory chapter is an intimate description of an autopsy which isn’t a very pleasant thing to read about, although very interesting.
Unsurprisingly, it’s very technical, which makes for difficult reading, although don’t let that put you off. Yes there were passages I didn’t understand, terms I didn’t understand, but it didn’t spoil the reading. You just take it for what it is, for what she’s saying. And you work out the bigger picture. And she’s blended the technical bits with her own stories which is a nice balance.
It is a fascinating book. I was up until quite late into the night reading it as it was just so addictive.
What I really enjoyed was how personal it was. Yes she’s gone into a lot of technical medical detail which is interesting, but she’s given stories of her own illness, of her son’s, which shows us the human sides of medics, who we often akin to Gods, and how they couldn’t possibly fall ill.
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