Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
What Are You Going Through
By: Sigrid Nunez
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Sigrid Nunez (American Author, novelist, editorial assistant at The New York Review of Books.)
Sigrid Nunez’s “What Are You Going Through” resonates with many who are dealing with terminal illness or the infirmity of old age. Nunez creates a story of a friend dealing with the debilitating effects of cancer treatment. The treatment is prolonging her life but at a cost her friend is increasingly unwilling to bare. Her friend has a plan to quit the treatments and either let nature take its course or swallow a pill to end her suffering.
The friend approaches close friends to ask them to live with her for the time she has left with the understanding that she will take the pill at some point during their time together. Her close friends decline but Nunez’s main character, who is a more distant acquaintance, agrees to stay with her until the end.
The author’s subject is about life and choices humans may or may not have a right to make.
Nunez writes a story that leaves the sole choice of living or dying in the hands of women, more particularly a woman who has terminal cancer. It doesn’t seem a coincidence that a woman is the writer, and her subject is a woman’s choice of living or dying. An inference one might draw is that the choice of life is more a woman’s than a man’s decision. Of course, that raises questions beyond “right to die“.
In the main character’s agreement to live with the cancer patient, the author implies those suffering from a fatal illness do have a right to take their own life.
Euthanasia is currently illegal in all 50 states of the United States, but 10 jurisdictions, including Washington D.C., California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, Maine, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Washington allow assisted suicide. Presumably, Nunez’s character is in one of the 10 jurisdictions that allow assisted suicide.
Of course, the question left unanswered is assisted suicide a choice that should be left in the hands of an individual.
Obviously, not everyone agrees because most American states do not authorize assisted suicide. Nunez offers no definitive opinion. Her main character is helping a friend make a choice about a cancer patient’s own life, but the author leaves the choice unmade at the end of her story.
At best, Nunez’s story leaves reader/listener’s on their own about a person’s right to take their own life. Maybe that is her point, but it leaves this critic unsatisfied.
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