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.
