Description
A brilliant combination of lyrical memoir and guide to living and dying, comparable to Kathryn Mannix's With the End in Mind and Julia Samuel's Grief Works, from the author of Your Life in My Hands.
This is a wonderful book. Rachel takes the worst life can throw at us and shows us the beauty in it
What a remarkable book this is; tender, funny, brave, heartfelt, radiant with love and life. It sings with joy and kindness
A truly wonderful book. Read it
A truly beautiful book about death and life and the price of love. Told by a doctor, with compassion and wisdom. I cried, but they were warm, comforting tears. It made me think about stuff I fear in a new and better way
Moving, thought-provoking and so very important. I'm immeasurably grateful to have read it, and it will stay with me. In death, we learn about life
A touching and profound meditation on what it means to be human . . . it is a remarkable book
Dear Life names the tension between love and risk that gives life its sweetness. It takes readers to the edge of life in supportive, wise company
Heart-wrenchingly tender
She writes with a tender, lyrical beauty
Her words are brimful of love, grace and kindness
A magnificent, tender book
Moving . . . an honest account from the front line of death
An enthralling and deeply affecting book . . . It is [the] blend of the personal and professional that makes Dear Life so special
Honest, clear-sighted and immensely wise, Clarke's book is laced with loss, yet raises a jubilant toast to life
A heartbreaking, exhilarating read
Arguably the most remarkable book of the year
An NHS doctor interweaves heartwarming stories of palliative care for patients in a hospice with memories of her beloved GP father
Rachel Clarke weaves together an account of her training as a doctor who came to specialise in palliative care, the stories of her patients, and her father's death in Dear Life. I read it while coming to terms with the death of a family friend, and found it full of honesty and tender wisdom about life and the process of dying. It managed the brilliant and paradoxical feat of helping you love life a little more and fear death a little less
This astonishing book by Dr Clarke will make you re-evaluate your own life and priorities. This is a deeply moving read
Compassionate, heartfelt and deeply life-affirming
Dr Rachel Clarke is an NHS palliative care doctor and the author of three Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction books. The most recent of these, Breathtaking (2021), was adapted into an acclaimed television series, broadcast on ITV in 2024. It reveals how she and her colleagues confronted the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Dear Life (2020), depicting her work in an NHS hospice, was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize. Your Life in My Hands (2017) documents life as a junior doctor. Before going to medical school, Rachel was a broadcast journalist. She produced and directed current affairs documentaries focusing on subjects such as Al Qaeda, the Iraq War and the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She continues to write regularly for the Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Lancet among others, and appears regularly on television and radio. Inspired by a visit to Ukraine during the conflict in late 2022, Rachel founded a UK-registered charity, Hospice Ukraine, which supports the work of local palliative care teams in Ukraine.