Résumé
Résumé
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "A meditation on sense-making when there's no sense to be made, on letting go when we can't hold on, and on being unafraid even when we're terrified."--Lucy Kalanithi
"Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal ."--Bill Gates
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE
Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God's disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward "blessing." She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.
Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.
The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with "a surge of determination." Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you "can't do" and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.
Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.
Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason
"I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping--she's like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate's story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?" --Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising
Critiques (3)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
With grace, wisdom, and humor, Bowler (Blessed), a divinity professor at Duke University, tells of her cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment in a way that pierces platitudes to showcase her resilience in the face of impending death. At 35 years old, after months of enduring stomach pains and visiting specialists who had conflicting suggestions, Bowler was rushed into emergency surgery for stage IV colon cancer. Surrounded by her husband, very young son, and a host of supportive friends, she faces down the likelihood that she will not live a year. As she responds well to treatment, she enters a period of uncertainty, hoping to survive and maximize her time with her family. Throughout her account of weekly flights to Atlanta from North Carolina for experimental therapy and realizations that each holiday might be her last, she relates her suddenly terrifying life to her academic work on the prosperity gospel-a peculiarly American belief in deserved success and control that is at odds with her current life. Bowler's lovely prose and sharp wit capture her struggle to find continued joy after her diagnosis. This poignant look at the unpredictable promises of faith will amaze readers. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Critique de Kirkus
A touching tale of battling cancer set against the backdrop of the prosperity gospel.Bowler (Duke Divinity School; Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, 2013), a specialist in the study of the prosperity gospel, found her life turned upside down in her mid-30s with a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer. Here, she chronicles her journey from what seemed a death sentence to a lifestyle of living from one medical test to another, surviving as a result of the effects of a clinical trial and a stalwart community of friends and family. Throughout, the author delivers raw emotion, realistic description, and candid assessments, and she weaves in references to the faith system she has studied and, indeed, of which she has become a community member. Bowler points out the ironies of fighting a deadly battle against her own body while relating to a strand of Christianity that teaches that faith, holiness, and confidence will provide any sort of blessing or healing the believer needs. From Oprah to Osteen, Bowler examines the effects of such preaching upon people of faith, including the depth of turmoil that true tragedy often brings. The author sees her cancer story unfold in liturgical terms, using Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary Time to explain her journey. Ultimately, in Ordinary Time (the bulk of the church year), she discovers the power of being present in life, enjoying her family, and finding meaning where she is able. Bowler's reflections will speak to those who have suffered similar illnesses and existential crises, and secondary themes abound: the inhumane and often emotionless face of modern health care, the capacity of family and close friends to give of themselves through love and generosity, the well-meaning but foolish things that people say to those who are living with serious health issues, and more.An inspiring story of finding faithin God, in family, and in oneselfwhile walking close to the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique du New York Review of Books
HOW TO BREAK UP WITH YOUR PHONE By Catherine Price. (Ten Speed, paper, $12.99.) We're all addicted. That's not big news. But are there practical ways to unplug and, as Price puts it, "take back your life"? She has a plan, a 30-day plan, everything happens for a reason By Kate Bowler. (Random House, $26.) Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity School, had a perspective-altering experience at 35 when she learned she had late-stage colon cancer. This is a memoir about her disillusionment with the "prosperity gospel," that American belief that to good people come only good things. She doesn't think this anymore, being wagner By Simon Callow. (Vintage, paper, $16.95.) Author of a monumental biography of Orson Welles, Callow now turns to an equally operatic subject: Richard Wagner, his life and times, building the great society By Joshua Zeitz. (Viking, $30.) The inner workings of the White House, with its war room intensity, never ceases to capture readers' attention. Zeitz delves here into Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, capturing both the atmosphere and the advisers (Bill Moyers and Jack Valenti, among others) who made Johnson's vision a reality, a literary tour de france By Robert Darnton. (Oxford, $34.95.) Darnton continues his decades-long exploration of how the publishing industry worked in France on the eve of the revolution. Using a trove of documents from a Swiss publisher that smuggled illegal works over the border, he is able to piece together a complex network that put subversive books in the hands of French men and women. "It is an intimate, often embarrassing thing to read over someone else's shoulder. (Anyone looking for a quick, effective mortification need only check the marginalia in his college paperbacks.) But certain books are wide and deep enough to deserve docents: George Eliot's 'Middlemarch' is, and Rebecca Mead, a staff writer at The New Yorker, whose my life in middlemarch I have been plunging through, is a sympathetic guide. 'Middlemarch' is both a boulder and a lodestar, a hulking, lengthy exploration of life's little delights and its disappointments - nominally as experienced by provincial burghers, but really, by us all. Mead weaves in bits of Eliot's own biography, appreciations of subsequent fans like Virginia Woolf and her own life story. In so doing, she brings what can seem remote in Eliot into the present, and touches on her profound achievement: the way she enters into but also remains above her characters, opening up for examination their innocent folly, their tragic hubris, their gentle goodness and their slippery selfregard." - MATTHEW SCHNEIER, STYLES REPORTER, ON WHAT HE'S READING.