The Empathy Exams

If I could only have one book for the rest of my life it would be this one.

The ur-text of braided essays, and of essay collections, LJ asks us to look at pain, obsession, care, and empathy through radically surprising lenses. In my favorite of the collected essays, “The Devil’s Bait,” she creates a sense of quantum reality that demands that the reader see their own skepticism and ableism, while at the same time implanting a persistent anxiety around the possibility that they might in fact be vulnerable to the very thing they are judging.

I don’t read a lot of creative non-fiction, but I loved this one. It’s a collection of essays that recalls the best of Joan Didion or Tom Wolfe. Minutely observed, crisply written, and suffused with a wry humor, it’s as much fun as a good novel. And the first essay, toggling between the author’s experience as a medical actor (item 31 on the checklist for how medical students handle her supposed conditions: “Voiced empathy for my situation/problem”) and two real medical problems she faced, is all about empathy. Much of the rest of the book deals with empathy too, at… show more.