NO CURE FOR BEING HUMAN

In this memoir, Bowler (history of Christianity, Duke Divinity Sch.; Everything Happens for a Reason) talks about receiving a diagnosis of stage-four colon cancer; this begins a series of reflections on the evolution of Bowler’s illness and her emotional journey through the ups and downs of responding to cancer. Bowler’s affecting narrative meditates on the things she’s just faced; she also takes it as an opportunity to reflect on the past and the kind of life she wants for herself in the future. Bowler writes about all of it with good humor, occasional anger, and vivid honesty, when she’s discussing remission, the toll of the cancer cure, and the incredible hassle of getting a disability parking permit from Duke because her physician didn’t properly write the request. Most poignantly, she talks about dealing with oncologists who aren’t straightforward with her about her diagnosis. Through it all, she survives, offering along the way fresh insight on life and chronic illness.

 

VERDICT: General readers will be engrossed by this heartfelt memoir of sickness, family, and recovery. The table that serves as an appendix of complicated truths is worth the price of the book.

“Wise, wry reflections on living in the face of uncertainty. A sensitive memoir of survival.” 

NO CURE FOR BEING HUMAN (And Other Truths I Need To Hear)

Author: Kate Bowler

Review Issue Date: August 1, 2021

Online Publish Date: July 7, 2021

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 224

A chronicle of grief, hope, and courage.

In 2015, when she was 35, Bowler, who teaches the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School, was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, with a very low chance of survival beyond two years. Years later, she follows her earlier memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason, with wise, wry reflections on living in the face of uncertainty. “The world I thought I knew before the diagnosis was hygienic, predictable, and safe,” Bowler writes. Her new world was threatening, uncontrollable, and unstable; her research, writing, and teaching suddenly seemed irrelevant. Often, the medical community made her feel reduced to an integer, quantified and charted. Cancer, she increasingly realized, was a mystery, and repeated visits and scans led to conversations with doctors to discuss what “ ‘we’ are learning” about the illness. Elated that she was one of few candidates for immunotherapy, she enrolled in an arduous clinical study, traveling weekly from her home in North Carolina to Atlanta, where she was infused with harsh, debilitating chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs. Every cycle of her treatment left her “grateful, weary, and, almost imperceptibly, weaker than the week before”—without knowing if, and when, the treatment would work. Above all, she confronted the daily specter of imminent death. “Everybody pretends that you only die once,” she writes. “But that’s not true. You can die to a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.” Bowler debunks the hollow clichés that she has heard too often: to seize the day, live in the present, work on a bucket list. “Facing the past,” she counters, “is part of facing the future.” Like others who have suffered traumatic loss or illness—especially during the pandemic—Bowler recognizes that “so often the experiences that define us are the ones we didn’t pick.”

A sensitive memoir of survival.

No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)

Kate Bowler. Random House, $27 (224p) ISBN 978-0-593-23077-0In heartbreaking essays, Bowler (Everything Happens for a Reason) recounts lessons learned after being diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at the age of 35. An associate professor at Duke Divinity School, she thought that everyone had limitless choices before receiving the grim diagnosis that pegged her survival odds at 14%: “Hope for the future feels like a kind of arsenic that needs to be carefully administered, or it can poison the sacred work of living in the present.” While mourning the loss of a future with her husband and two-year-old son, Bowler enrolled in a clinical trial for a new immunotherapy drug, and, miraculously, was one of 3% of patients to successfully respond to it. After searching her whole life for a “formula for how to live,” she writes, “cancer treatment had provided the clearest one of all.” Bowler’s strong faith is present throughout, though the writing, refreshingly, never feels overtly religious. More than anything, her convictions underscore the importance of living life on one’s own terms. “Someday... God will draw us into the eternal moment where there will be no suffering,” she writes. “In the meantime, we are stuck with our beautiful, terrible finitude.” Those in need of a wake-up call will find it in this breathtaking narrative. Agent: Christy Fletcher, Fletcher & Co. (Sept.)

"The problem with our lives is that we cannot solve them. We can only live them. From that bookstore, I could see no formula that would get me the upgrade, guarantee my growth or use my cancer to teach me.

Instead of my best life now, I’ll have to settle into life now: the way the light streaks in through the blinds in this room; the way the nurse allows me to pretend he is a vampire who hoards these bright red vials of blood for his own sinister purposes; the way I’m sure it will be the okayest day yet."

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When Kate Bowler, an associate professor at Duke Divinity School, was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer at age 35, her chances of surviving two years were just 14%. No Cure for Being Human is the wry, touching follow-up to Bowler's 2018 memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Loved), and its associated podcast. Here, Bowler continues to combat unhelpful religious/self-help mantras as she ponders what to do with the extra time medical breakthroughs have given her.

After multiple surgeries, a promising immunotherapy drug trial gave Bowler hope that she would live to see her 40th birthday and her young son start kindergarten. Working on her bucket list, she found that small moments outshined large events: on a trip to the Grand Canyon, what stood out was a chapel in the ponderosa pinewoods where she added a prayer to those plastering the walls. In the Church calendar, "Ordinary Time" is where most of life plays out, so she encourages readers to live in an "eternal present."

The chapters function like stand-alone essays, some titled after particular truisms (like "You Only Live Once"). The book's bittersweet tone finds the humor as well as the tragedy in a cancer diagnosis. Witty re-created dialogue and poignant scenes show the type-A author learning to let go: "I am probably replaceable," she acknowledges, but here in the shadow of death "the mundane has begun to sparkle." These dispatches from the "lumpy middle" of life and faith are especially recommended to fans of Anne Lamott. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Discover: In her bittersweet second memoir, a religion professor finds the joys and ironies in a life overshadowed by advanced cancer.

Advanced Review –

Issue: August 1, 2021

No Cure for Being Human: (and Other Truths I Need to Hear). By Kate Bowler Sept. 2021. 224p. Random, $27 (9780593230770).

 

Bowler led a charmed life—a tenure track job at Duke University, nearly perfect marriage, and baby son—until she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Her first memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved (2018), dealt with the reckoning with possible death and with the saccharine platitudes that people offer. Her scholarly work on the prosperity gospel infuses the pages of this second memoir. What does it mean to "live your best life" when death seems all too close? Bowler observes that bucket lists have become a "new form of experiential capitalism" and ultimately a death-avoidant strategy. As she recounts the labyrinthine road of treatments and surgery, she finds love and joy everywhere, even as despair is never more than a hair's breadth away. Bowler's prose is adept at capturing the dialectic of life's "splendid, ragged edges" showing through. And she's funny, too. This is a gem for cancer patients and their families and for survivors, but really, for anyone who understands the terror and beauty of being human.

— Joan Curbow

“Kate Bowler refuses to jump on the bandwagon of toxic positivity. Instead, she leads us to a truer truth: the work is unfinishable, and so be it. I find my interactions with the mind of Kate Bowler more useful and comforting than most all others combined.”

Kelly Corrigan

NYT bestselling author, host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders and PBS’s Tell Me More.

 

"Kate Bowler has paid through the nose to become a writer of uncommon spiritual wisdom, coupled with an amazing sense of humor and a heart full of love. She fills me with hope."

Anne Lamott

 

Kate Bowler is the rare author who can explore difficult subjects with both breathtaking honesty and light-heartedness. From the moment I started this brilliant memoir, I couldn’t put it down (and I underlined many passages). Faith, mortality, vocation, parenthood, the World’s Largest Ball of String…Bowler brings profound insight and love to the human experience.

Gretchen Rubin