The Undying - Anne Boyer
To reduce an irreducible book, this is a set of linked essays around breast cancer: the author’s own, those of figures like Susan Sontag and Audre Lorde, and those of the pseudonymous Internet posters. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, but mostly you’ll think, not least about why some things might make you laugh and cry instead of others. And none are better at infusing that deep thought into their vocabulary and syntax than Anne Boyer. It’s the kind of book where certain passages hit so hard, you have to step back for a second to feel your basest-level reasoning alter, about the cancer-care marketplace and much beyond. For someone writing so eloquently about oncologically-induced exhaustion, Boyer’s is the most alert writing of the year.