Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award
‘What a remarkable book this is; tender, funny, brave, heartfelt, radiant with love and life. It brought me continuously to laughter and – several times – to tears. It sings with joy and kindness’ Robert Macfarlane
From the Sunday Times bestselling creator of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply personal memoir that finds light and love in the darkest of places.
As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Each day she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable.
Rachel’s training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing – even the best palliative care – can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love.
And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life – more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion – than it’s essential to ever consider. For if there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, even as we are living as though we have at all times on the planet.
Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis. This can be a love letter – to a father, to a profession, to life itself.
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