A History of Present Illness, Anna DeForest
A History of Present Illness, Anna DeForest
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A History of Present Illness
A Novel

Author: Anna DeForest

Narrator: Helen Laser

Unabridged: 3 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/16/2022

Synopsis

This “brutal and brave” (Booklist) novel transmutes the practice of medicine into a larger exploration of humanity, the meaning of care, and the nature of annihilation—physical, spiritual, or both. A young woman puts on a white coat for her first day as a student doctor. So begins this powerful debut, which follows our unnamed narrator through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, difficult births, sudden deaths, and a budding relationship with a seminarian.   In the troubled world of the hospital, where the language of blood tests and organ systems so often hides the heart of the matter, she works her way from one bed to another, from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis, to a child in pain crisis, to a young woman, fading from confusion to aphasia to death. The long hours and heartrending work begin to blur the lines between her new life as a physician and the lifelong traumas she has fled.    In brilliant, wry, and biting prose, A History of Present Illness is a boldly honest meditation on the body, the hope of healing in the face of total loss, and what it means to be alive. 2023 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters • A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022 • A Publishers Weekly “Writer to Watch” “A revelation.” –The New York Times

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lark on May 30, 2022

"In a special section on brain pathology, I watched a fetus have an autopsy. The limp little body was draped over a chunk of two-by-four." There are a lot of sentences like this one in this novel. It reads like a story told by a young person who has just discovered that people suffer needlessly, and......more

Goodreads review by Sam on September 17, 2022

This was without a doubt the most beautiful book I have read in a while. I am surprised to see the low ratings because it’s such a concise and extremely complex view into the medical system and personal trauma. Anna DeForest writes with raw honesty and the glimpse into the mind of a young, unnamed m......more

Goodreads review by johnny on July 31, 2023

a beautifully written novel (that almost reads like a memoir) about working, living, and surviving in the medical field. love, grief, loss, death, rebirth, mental illness — all these topics are covered. this is a love letter to those who take care of us, our friends, and family when we are at our lo......more

Goodreads review by Gabby on May 25, 2022

I am completely obsessed with this book. Yes, I do work at Little, Brown, and Company so some might consider me biased but, in my defense, I am not the publicist, and this is a work of art. Anna DeForest’s debut novel is a gut punch to the soul that I want to experience over and over again. The ques......more

Goodreads review by Megan on September 14, 2024

welp this book does not help my fear that becoming a physician will make me severely depressed and mentally ill reading this book I not only admire DeForest deeply as a writer but also a physician. she has an acute sense of care embedded in her observation of her patients. this book is a series of sh......more

Quotes

“A History of Present Illness is a singular read, full of beauty and wit and monstrous truth. It took me down dark corridors of loss and out into the too bright sunshine again. I’ve never read anything like it. Wholly original and shockingly brilliant.”—Jenny Offill, author of Weather

"Anna DeForest stares death in the eye, understands it fully, and writes it down simply. Like all mortals, I’ve acutely needed this book all my life. At last it’s here."—Sarah Manguso, author of Very Cold People

"This book destroyed my heart, and then restored it. The raw eloquence of the language, the wisdom spiked with gallows humor, the young woman who transcends an early life of damage—the tension and triumph come from how easily the narrator's life could have gone the other way. She wonders: 'To get over what you've come from but to stay who you are. What would that even look like?'  It looks like this novel, and it is beautiful."—Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Stories

"Nowhere else have I ever encountered such brutal wisdom—about life, about the body, about our shared circumstance as the future dead—delivered with such grace, such largeness of heart.  Anna DeForest's fearless, unsparing debut is a life raft thrown out for all of us to cling to." —Garielle Lutz, author of The Complete Gary Lutz

“A stunning debut—original, creative and wholly satisfying, taking us not only into the medical world but into the human spirit. Anna DeForest is a writer to watch.”—Danielle Ofri, MD, author of What Doctors Feel and When We Do Harm

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