The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

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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

About David Shields

Details

Imprint: Penguin
Published: 03/03/2011
ISBN: 9780141049496
Length: 256 pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 16mm x 129mm
Weight: 181g
Price: £15.99

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The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

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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

Breathtaking . . . Shields had us laughing out loud, even in the face of death

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

Shields is a sharp-eyed, self-deprecating, at times hilarious writer

About David Shields

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