The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:3rd Mar '11
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being.
Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.
So pure and wide in its implications that I think of it almost as a secular, unsentimental Kahlil Gibran: a textbook for the acceptance of our fate on earth -- Jonathan Lethem
Breathtaking . . . Shields had us laughing out loud, even in the face of death * Timeout, Chicago *
Mix equal parts of anatomy and autobiography, science and self-disclosure, physiology and family history; shake, stir, add dashes of miscellany, pinches of borrowed wisdom, simmer over a low-grade fever of mortality, and a terrible beauty of a book is born -- Thomas Lynch * Boston Globe *
Shields is a sharp-eyed, self-deprecating, at times hilarious writer * Wall Street Journal *
ISBN: 9780141049496
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 16mm
Weight: 181g
256 pages