Green Party leader Elizabeth May recommends Wayson Choy’s ‘Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying’

The book deals with two life-threatening events and the author’s struggle to regain his ability to walk and talk, his personality and, even his sanity.  In interviews, Wayson Choy has talked about how deeply grateful he is that when struggling to regain his life through weeks of hospitalization, he did not have to also consider bankruptcy and medical bills. In that sense, Tommy Douglas is infused in its pages.

Despite being non-fiction, the book has a mythic quality. That the bare-bones description sounds grim and depressing makes the fact that the experience of reading this book is inspiring and joyful even more surprising. The narrative moves in and out of dimensions of human existence with an illuminating clarity of vision. It is ultimately a love story. It is the love of friends and the self-assembled family of a life well lived.  It is love of self in the best and highest sense. It is a glorious book.