PositiveThe Guardian (UK)I was prepared to be bored by the subject and irritated by the author. I was wrong: given its subject – broadly, death and disease – the book is unexpectedly fun, and the author pretty much irresistibly likable. This is a very British book: in the US such a compendium of self-deprecation would doom any literary and elder-statesman ambitions ... Often it seems as if Marsh is afraid to bore the reader and feels compelled to digress from the main themes, which include the manifold anxieties and humiliations that come with being a patient and the moral issues involved in euthanasia. His discussion of end-of-life care and assisted dying is the best essay I have read on the subject. The constant jumping from topic to topic, from personal narrative to gee-whiz popular science, makes the book more light-hearted, but it remains an odd composite: clearly the product of an unusual and disarmingly hyperactive mind.
