A profound and provocative journey through the human body from the award-winning writer
broadcaster and surgeon. What does it mean to live in a body? For Gabriel Weston there was
always something missing from the anatomy she was taught at medical school. Medicine teaches us
how a body functions but it doesn't help us navigate the reality of living in one. As she
became a surgeon a mother and ultimately a patient herself Weston found herself grappling
with the gap between scientific knowledge and unfathomable complexity of human experience. In
this captivating exploration of the body Weston dissolves the boundaries that usually divide
surgeon and patient pushing beyond the limit of what science has to tell us about who we are.
Focusing on our individual organs not just under the intense spotlight of the operating
theatre but in the central role they play in the stories of our lives a fuller and more human
picture of our bodies emerges: more fragile frightening and miraculous than we could have
imagined. Intimate penetrating and original Alive is an anatomy like no other about our
bodies and bonds the richness and brevity of existence and the thread of mortality that
connect us all.
