Living in Parentheses

"I am glad to have been permitted to learn to live with, rather than simply die from, cancer," remarks Rose Rappaport in one passage of this lucid, unsentimental, and transcendent collection of essays on her sojourn with the illness that eventually took her life. "Mostly I am glad to measure my life, not in terms of what it once was or what I might have wished it to be, but of how wonderful it is now." It was a transformative experience for her that shed profound light on the changeable meanings of work, love, friendship, and growth. The essays she left will as surely alter anyone fortunate enough to read them.