Best Books About Aging and Mortality: Fiction and Memoir
The best books about aging and mortality — from Being Mortal and When Breath Becomes Air to A Man Called Ove and The Year of Magical Thinking. Fiction and memoir.
By Priya Anand
Books about aging and mortality grapple with the things most of us spend most of our lives avoiding: the fact that life ends, that the people we love will die, and that the way we live in the time remaining matters. The books below range from medical non-fiction (Gawande) to memoir (Kalanithi, Didion) to literary fiction (Franzen, Backman) — different approaches to the same central questions.
Essential Non-Fiction
Being Mortal — Atul Gawande (2014)
The most important book about aging and death for general readers — Gawande examines how hospitals and nursing homes systematically prioritise the extension of life over its quality, and argues for a different approach: asking dying patients what matters to them, and organising the remaining time around those priorities rather than around medical intervention for its own sake. Gawande draws on his patients’ stories and on research into what elderly people actually want; the result is both a critique of the medical system and a practical guide to thinking about one’s own aging and death. The most widely read and most practically useful book on this list.
When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi (2016)
Kalanithi’s memoir of his terminal cancer diagnosis — written by a neurosurgeon who has spent a decade helping patients face death and who must now face it himself. The book is about what makes life meaningful when it is ending, about the decision to have a child after a terminal diagnosis, and about what medicine can and cannot do for its own practitioners. Finished by his wife after his death; one of the most widely read memoirs of the past decade.
The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion (2005)
The most precise account of grief in contemporary non-fiction — Didion’s year after her husband’s sudden death, including her daughter’s simultaneous serious illness. Didion’s method (the same method she used in journalism: look directly at what is there, do not flinch, do not console) produces a memoir that is rigorous about grief’s irrationality rather than explaining it away. National Book Award winner.
Fiction
A Man Called Ove — Fredrik Backman (2012)
The most popular novel about late life and the will to live — Ove, a recently widowed Swedish retiree who has decided to kill himself (his wife is dead; his job is gone; his purpose has evaporated), is gradually derailed from his plan by a neighbourhood full of people who need him in spite of himself. Backman’s novel is funny and then deeply moving; it is the most accessible on this list and the best starting point for readers who find the other titles too heavy.
The Corrections — Jonathan Franzen (2001)
Franzen’s novel about the Lambert family — elderly Alfred, whose Parkinson’s disease is advancing, and his wife Enid’s final attempt to get the family together for one last Christmas before things fall apart further. The novel is partly about aging and decline and partly about the impossibility of the family ideal, but Alfred’s progressive loss of control over his body and mind is the most devastating account of a man facing the end of his capacities in contemporary literary fiction.
Nora Webster — Colm Tóibín (2014)
Tóibín’s quiet novel about a widow in 1960s Ireland — Nora Webster, whose husband has recently died, navigating her grief while raising her children, managing her reduced circumstances, and gradually discovering what remains of her own identity when the roles of wife and mother are stripped away. The most understated and the most precisely observed of the fiction in this list.
Reading Order
Start here: Being Mortal → When Breath Becomes Air → A Man Called Ove.
Grief: The Year of Magical Thinking → Nora Webster → The Corrections.
Complete: Being Mortal → When Breath Becomes Air → The Year of Magical Thinking → A Man Called Ove → Nora Webster.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best book about death and dying?
Being Mortal (2014) by Atul Gawande is the most important book about aging and death for general readers — a surgeon's examination of how medicine deals with the end of life, why the current approach (extending life at any cost) often fails patients and families, and what a better approach might look like. When Breath Becomes Air (2016) by Paul Kalanithi is the most moving — a neurosurgeon's memoir written as he was dying of lung cancer. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion is the most precise account of grief in contemporary literature.
What is Being Mortal about?
Being Mortal (2014) by Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, examines how medicine approaches aging and death — specifically the way that hospitals and nursing homes prioritise safety and the extension of life over the quality of the time remaining. Gawande argues that the medical system is systematically bad at helping people die well, and that the question 'What does a good life look like, given that it is ending?' is rarely asked. The book draws on his patients' stories, research into what actually matters to dying people, and the history of how aging came to be medicalised.
What is When Breath Becomes Air about?
When Breath Becomes Air (2016) by Paul Kalanithi is the memoir Kalanithi wrote after being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at age thirty-six, just as he was completing his neurosurgery residency. The book is about medicine, mortality, and meaning — what it means to have spent a decade learning to extend other people's lives and then to face the end of your own. Kalanithi's prose is precise and literary (he was a literature student before becoming a doctor); the book was finished by his wife and published after his death. One of the most widely read memoirs of the past decade.
What is The Year of Magical Thinking about?
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion is Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, of a heart attack at dinner. Didion's 'magical thinking' is the irrational belief, impossible to suppress, that her husband might return — that she should not give away his shoes because he will need them when he comes back. The book is the most precise and least sentimental account of grief in contemporary non-fiction, and won the National Book Award.
