Little, Brown Book Group Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love, Loss and Consolation

Combining compassion with a medical doctor's understanding of the condition of patients already at the end of their lives, Clark offers many examples of how one can give them a peaceful death and a chance to communicate and say goodbye to their loved ones. She is also a gifted writer, able to impart deep insights into the human psyche with literary flourish.

What a read!! Utterly beautiful. Dr Clarke writes with such humanity and joy for life even as life in front of her is ebbing away. Her personal and professional travel through the stories in her world of medicine and then palliative care is so uplifting and strangely comforts me as I reflect my onward journey with elderly parents and possible health issues that may affect my family and friends. The book also helps to begin to dispel the myth of dying and helps to ease the fears of worry and anxiety that can occupy terminally ill patients. Dr Clarke reassures one patient who is having a panic attack when he thinks he is dying in that moment with such calm kindness and honesty that I am thankful that such loving people exist in our NHS. She also honours the work of the palliative nurses she works with by showing their simple actions towards the dying that will melt your heart. I could not put this book down over 48 hours until I had finished it and I smiled with joy and then cried at the wonderful retellings of how people at the end of their lives celebrated the joys that make life worth living with such dignity and empowerment. A book with a message that will stay with me for a long time until one day I may share the same love, kindness and joy with someone I love at the end of their life. What an honour!

A truly beautifully, honest, real account of a good death and the importance of living your best life until the end. Removing fear from death and showing the true kindness of humans when it matters. Heartfelt excellence, everyone should read this book and learn from it regardless of health or illness. We are all after dying from the moment we take our first breath. Highly Recommended.

One of the copies I recieved came with a huge grease mark on it?

I was recommended to read this by a friend before starting work at a hospice and am so glad I did. It is very well-written, as one might expect from a journalist turned palliative care doctor, but more than that I felt I got a felt sense of what working in palliative care might be like. I found the descriptions of several deaths, all much less bleak and frightening than I had imagined, strangely comforting.