As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence. As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age.
Marsh knows how to set a scene, how to create suspense and how to surprise the reader ... For the most part, Marsh does not pretend to answer metaphysical questions about the mind, or even assume that they can be answered by the likes of us ... Marsh is often funny, sometimes at his own expense ... There’s no false comfort here. Instead, there’s prose that breaks in gentle waves, its undercurrents deep, the surface of an ocean vast enough to put our lives in moral perspective. The narrative takes detours through DIY and dollhouses, hospital décor and Himalayan hikes. Marsh is seated, storytelling, and he is in no hurry.
As Marsh is at pains to explain, doctors do not know as much as their patients want them to, and can only predict in terms of statistical probabilities. Now that he no longer has patients’ feelings to consider, he is able to be admirably cogent and honest ... [An] intelligent and dynamic man ... Fascinating, unusually revelatory, ultimately conflicted and poignant.
There is nothing depressing about this book. Marsh's tone is measured, clear, sometimes wryly humorous, as he looks at himself, his foibles, his mistakes and decisions ... Marsh also deftly weaves in other issues — his love of nature, his grandchildren and his unending fascination with the mysteries of the human brain.
