Gripping ... Some of the subatomic stuff is inevitably harder to digest than the hospital drama, but it remains compelling in Junger’s hands. I found his search for the nature and meaning of death – an atheist’s open-minded grappling with the unknowable – to be at once reassuring and troubling.
At its best, In My Time of Dying is Mr. Junger as pure "meaning junkie": He attempts to wrestle with both the totality of his many near-death experiences and the potential that, in those liminal moments, we may apprehend a reality (we might even call it an afterlife) that transcends our human understanding ... It is painful, visceral reading. Mr. Junger’s prose doesn’t simply bring home the immediacy of his own averted death; it demands we anticipate our own demise ... At times, In My Time of Dying risks being little more than a book-length memento mori.