Field Guide to Falling Ill: Essays by Jonathan Gleason 

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2026, 256 pages 
ISBN 9780300282948

In these ten exemplary essays, Gleason mingles illness memoir, the challenges of caregiving, and loss (of health and spirit). Disease is portrayed not only as an aberration of the body’s normal homeostasis but also a distinctive event with social, cultural, and possibly historical meaning. Contagions (viruses, prejudices, even love) receive special attention as catalysts of uncertainty, anxiety, and sometimes terror. Spaces – inner, close, distant, and built – are similarly scrutinized. In 1623, the English poet John Donne declared that “the greatest misery of sickness is solitude.” The narrator of the title essay echoes that sentiment, describing “loneliness” as the world’s greatest sorrow. He volunteers as a part-time medical interpreter at a free clinic but suddenly becomes a patient himself with a blood clot in the left arm. These experiences lead to an understanding of the power and limitations of both language and empathy. Other essays explore organ donation, AIDS, mental illness and the demise of large psychiatric hospitals, Tay-Sachs disease and xenophobia, pain, addiction, and the trial of an Ohio doctor charged with multiple counts of murder. Throughout these pages, Gleason points out the hubris of medicine as well as its shortcomings. He writes, “We like to believe we know the vastness of the world, that everything can be explained through our current models of understanding” (p3). At some point (or maybe many times), however, we will all fall ill and become a patient. And that immense world with all its scientific knowledge will dramatically contract to our single suffering body longing to be comforted and cherished by others. 

“An Eye in the Throat” in Good and Evil and Other Stories (pages 57-96) by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell  

New York, NY: Knopf, 2025, 192 pages 
ISBN 9780593803103 

It’s every parent’s nightmare: a serious (and potentially preventable) injury to their child that occurs right in front of them. Here, the setting is Argentina in the 1990’s. Inquisitive two-year-old Elías chokes on a lithium battery from his grandmother’s digital calculator while his father is in charge of watching him play. A visit to the ER and then an appointment with the family doctor the next day offers little reassurance for the parents. On the third day, Elías begins coughing and develops a fever. An operation is performed to remove the lodged battery and repair tissue damage to the esophagus. A tracheostomy is performed, and he undergoes four operations in a span of six years. He is unable to speak. At one point, he mysteriously gets out of his car seat and briefly becomes lost at a gas station. Soon after, a landline phone at home eerily rings each night. When the father answers, there is no voice at the other end. The parents eventually separate. Elías comprehends that all family members are casualties, and with an amazing capacity for empathy concludes, “There is a hole in my throat, a hole in my body that hurts in theirs” (p79). He is enrolled in a special school for deaf and mute children and becomes an outstanding student who is enthralled by language and mathematical physics. Schweblin’s searing story about parental guilt and grieving, failed communication, and the remarkable resiliency of youth is guaranteed to leave you with a lump in your throat. 

A Prescription for Burnout: Restorative Writing for Healthcare Professionals by Carolyn Roy-Bornstein 

Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026, 208 pages 
ISBN 9781421454733 

Burnout among physicians and nurses, accelerated by the emotional and physical crush of the Covid-19 pandemic, continues to be an urgent problem. Causes of burnout among health professionals include an erosion of autonomy, truncated time allotted for patient visits (but increased time required for inputting data into the electronic medical record system), feeling underappreciated, unrealistic expectations from patients and employers, and the daily exposure to the suffering of others. Roy-Bornstein, a pediatrician and a former RN, enthusiastically endorses reflective writing as an effective remedy for dealing with burnout (or perhaps preventing its occurrence). While not a new concept, her discussion includes research on the utility of restorative writing, some commentary on narrative medicine, and most importantly, more than 85 writing prompts (or Rx’s as she refers to them) for reflection and as a kind of therapeutic exercise. Organized into three sections – Addressing Emotional Exhaustion, Countering Cynicism, and Restoring Self-Efficacy – the book addresses issues of vulnerability, self-compassion, self-awareness, resilience, and optimism. There is no doubt that reflective writing can be healing and hopeful. Roy-Bornstein offers a helpful pathway to reducing the risk of professional burnout.  

Vesalius’s illustration, “Skeleton Contemplating a Skull” from Wellcome Collection

Conditions change once Sweet Home’s owner dies of a stroke and his widow brings in her brother-in-law and his young nephews to help run Sweet Home; the small liberties granted to the enslaved people are revoked by the new leadership, and cruelties ensue. The enslaved people, including Halle and a man named Paul D, plot to escape north; however, Sethe and her children are the only ones who succeed in doing so, only after she is violated by the nephews and brutally whipped by the brother-in-law for informing him of the assault. These events and Sethe’s flight are complicated by her near-full-term pregnancy. Approaching death from exhaustion and exposure, she is saved by a white girl who helps Sethe give birth. Her daughter is named Denver after the contextually benevolent white girl.  

Carrying her newborn, Sethe arrives at 124, greeted by her other three children, into the care of Baby Suggs. The bittersweet happiness of her arrival without Halle is marred one month later by the arrival of a team intending to reclaim Sethe and her kids for Sweet Home. Rather than allow herself and her children to be forced back into slavery, Sethe intends to commit infanticide and suicide, succeeding in the murder of her older daughter. This action effectively prevents them from being taken, and Sethe is exonerated of her charges. Despite this, her act of desperation crushes her family, eventually leading to Baby Suggs’ death and to the flight of her sons from the household. Eighteen years later, Paul D arrives at 124. He begins a relationship with Sethe and manages to evict the poltergeist.  

Soon thereafter, a strange woman arrives by the name of Beloved, the word Sethe had engraved on her child’s tombstone. Sethe is initially unaware of the stranger’s origins, and Paul D is effectively forced out by the new arrival. Once Beloved’s identity as the deceased child is understood, she, Sethe, and Denver become wrapped up in each other, blurring the lines of their identity. Sethe loses her job, but Denver manages to extricate herself to find work. Hearing of the family’s plight at the hands of the “unholy” Beloved, thirty black women of the area band together to purge 124 of her presence. Beloved leaves without a trace. Paul D eventually returns to 124, and memories of Beloved slowly fade into oblivion. 

Beloved is a pure work of art. Toni Morrison crafted a brilliant piece fueled by the lived experiences of enslaved people’s descendants in America and informed by the temporal proximity of the ratification of thirteenth amendment. The summary outlined above fails to capture the impact of the work’s nonlinear form, both in time and perspective. Flashbacks seamlessly interweave with the driving plot. Not only are the past and present difficult to distinguish, but this intermingling also elevates the past in status compared to the present, allowing the past to rival––and often exceed––the present in narrative importance. Time becomes a unique character, one whose primary achievement is the marring of other characters’ physical beings. Through this lens, the recapitulation of Sethe’s tree scars mirrors the historical impact of slavery on the modern-day United States. This context is further validated by the work’s inspiration, the life of Margaret Garner, an African- American enslaved woman who escaped, was recaptured, and who murdered her daughter while being returned to the South. 

Toni Morrison’s mastery of figurative language builds upon the nonlinearity of the piece. Her writing is powerfully displayed through allegories, the most notable of which is found on pages 248-252. Through Beloved’s perspective, Morrison blends hell and slave ships into one entity. This same section of the novel further unifies the perspectives of Beloved, Sethe, and Denver through a mélange of emotion and perception.  

The relevance of this piece to contemporary American politics and social issues is profound and disturbing. American history continues to discredit the experiences of people of color, particularly those of who identify as Black or African-American. This novel demands that we confront the United States’ history of racial oppression. Its magical realism provides new dimension to a historical narrative, allowing for greater imaginative accessibility to the meaning behind its story. As a last powerful image, I refer to the biblically paralleled coming of the four horsemen to “reclaim” Sethe: the sheriff assumes responsibility of reinforcing the dehumanization of Sethe and “addressing” her perceived cultural, psychological, and racialized aberrancy through punishment sans reformation.  

Miscellaneous 

Beloved
Toni Morrison

Awards
National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1987); Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988); American Book Award (1988); Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (1988); Frederic G. Melcher Book Award (1988)  

Publisher Vintage 
Place Published United States 
Edition 2004 
Page Count 324 

Originally published on September 16, 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf Inc. 

A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database . 
Web image by Alex Conti

Kirilov is the district doctor. His six-year-old son has just this moment died of diphtheria. He stands watching his wife caress the body as the doorbell rings. It is a wealthy stranger (Abogin) who begs the Doctor to come treat his wife who is in great pain. Kirilov says that he cannot possibly leave his wife at this time. Abogin insists, however, claiming that the doctor must know how terrible it is to witness the illness of a loved one and that his home is close-by. Kirilov relents.

But when they arrive at Abogin’s house, his wife is not home. She has pretended to be ill so that her husband would leave the house allowing her to run away with her lover. Abogin is crushed and begins to complain to Kirilov. Kirilov is fiercely angry that he has been dragged from his son’s death-bed to hear Abogin’s love troubles. They scream at one another, and the doctor returns home, with a firm and undying conviction that all those with money deserve his hatred.

Chekhov suggests that grief and misery do not bring people together to share, but force them apart. Pain is egotistic. The story also reflects on the status of doctors. When Abogin tries to lure the Doctor from his house, he speaks of the noble, self-sacrificing profession of medicine. However, he has so little respect for Kirilov as to hound him, then offer him money to absolve the insult. Kirilov, meanwhile, unjustly forms a prejudice against the rich that will never leave him.

Original Source: The Tales of Chekhov, Vol. 11: The Schoolmaster and Other Stories
Publisher: Ecco, 1986 | First published in 1887
Alternate Source: Chekhov’s Doctors, edited by Jack Coulehan
Publisher: Kent State University Press, 2003
Translated by: Constance Garnett
Places Published: New York; Kent, Ohio & London

A previous version of this review was published in the NYU Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (Litmed).

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