Body of Work

By Christine Montross,

Book cover of Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab

Book description

A "gleaming, humane" (The New York Times Book Review) memoir of the relationship between a cadaver named Eve and a first-year medical student

Medical student Christine Montross felt nervous standing outside the anatomy lab on her first day of class. Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses inā€¦

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Why read it?

1 author picked Body of Work as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Before she decided to study medicine, Christine Montross was a poet. She deploys the full beauty of language to explore how it feels to be a first-year medical student dissecting a cadaver in her gross anatomy class. Over the course of the year, Montross conveys much information about how the human body works and how doctors-to-be learn, but her primary focus is on her emotional journey, which spanned from being a student with no understanding beyond her own body to being someone able to heal anyone who comes to her for help. Lovely, powerful, and instructive, I hope this bookā€¦

From Loren's list on death-positive memoirs.

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