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    The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
    The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
    The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying

    Written by Nina Riggs and Kirby Heyborne

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *

    “Stunning…heartrending…this year’s When Breath Becomes Air.” —Nora Krug, The Washington Post

    “Beautiful and haunting.” —Matt McCarthy, MD, USA TODAY

    “Deeply affecting…simultaneously heartbreaking and funny.” —People (Book of the Week)

    “Vivid, immediate.” —Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe

    Starred reviews from * Kirkus Reviews * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal *

    Best Books of 2017 Selection by * The Washington Post *

    Most Anticipated Summer Reading Selection by * The Washington Post * Entertainment Weekly * Glamour * The Seattle Times * Vulture * InStyle * Bookpage * Bookriot * Real Simple * The Atlanta Journal-Constitution *

    The New York Times bestseller by poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is “a stunning…heart-rending meditation on life…It is this year’s When Breath Becomes Air” (The Washington Post).

    We are breathless but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.

    Poet and essayist Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer—one small spot. Within a year, she received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.

    How does a dying person learn to live each day “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two young children and adored husband for a loss that will shape the rest of their lives? How do we want to be remembered?

    Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, Nina asks: What makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? “Profound and poignant” (O, The Oprah Magazine), The Bright Hour is about how to make the most of all the days, even the painful ones. It’s about the way literature, especially Nina’s direct ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer.

    Brilliantly written and exceptionally moving, it’s a “deeply affecting memoir, a simultaneously heartbreaking and funny account of living with loss and the specter of death. As Riggs lyrically, unflinchingly details her reality, she finds beauty and truth that comfort even amid the crushing sadness” (People, Book of the Week).

    Tender and heartwarming, The Bright Hour “is a gentle reminder to cherish each day” (Entertainment Weekly, Best New Books) and offers us this important perspective: “You can read a multitude books about how to die, but Riggs, a dying woman, will show you how to live” (The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice).

    Editor's Note

    A light in the dark…

    In the tradition of “When Breath Becomes Air,” this inspiring, poetic, and surprisingly funny memoir explores how to “live with an awareness of death in the room.” It will leave you wanting to embrace every day, even the dark days, with love and courage.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 6, 2017
    ISBN9781508241430
    Author

    Nina Riggs

    Nina Riggs received her MFA in poetry in 2004 and published a book of poems, Lucky, Lucky, in 2009. She wrote about life with metastatic breast cancer on her blog, Suspicious Country; her recent work has appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She lived with her husband and sons and dogs in Greensboro, North Carolina. She is the author of The Bright Hour.

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    Reviews for The Bright Hour

    4.5/5

    165 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Amazing. You come across many non fiction books of family members who watch their loved ones die or people who have almost died. But the way in which Nina Riggs writes about her impending death is so fascinating, raw, heart break yet so heart warming. It makes you yearn to pull her right back from beyond. Her writing is impeccable. She is a true gem of a writer. I find myself thinking of her and her family from time to time. I highly recommend it!

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      At the grip of death, how do you continue to live. A poignant, interesting read

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      nonfiction / cancer memoir (posthumous publication) by poet and mother of two young boys (and apparently, descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson), diagnosed at age 37 with what would turn out to be a very aggressive form of breast cancershort chapters with humor and light make this easy to read, sad content makes it hard to forget.
    • 5/5
      This is not a book that I could race through, even though I loved so much about it. There is so much wit, wisdom, and depth in the memoir of Nina Riggs about her final year of living with metastatic breast cancer. I wanted it to go on and on, but reading it was difficult, knowing how it would end.
    • 4/5
      4.5 stars
      Searingly honest, courageous, humorous & eloquent. RIP Nina Riggs.
    • 5/5
      Well, here I am talking about cancer and dying again. I swear it's the last of these for a good long while, guys. (I hope I don't end up eating my words.) The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs was recommended to me after reading When Breath Becomes Air because Nina's widowed husband is now dating the widow of Paul Kalinithi who wrote the aforementioned. O_O At the start of her story, Nina was 38 years old and her biggest problems centered around publishing her newest bit of writing and mothering her two young sons with her husband...and then Cancer rapidly derailed her life. When Nina was initially diagnosed with breast cancer her mother was fighting her own battle with an aggressive myeloma. At first, Nina's diagnosis seemed quite straightforward in comparison. Her doctor felt it was quite treatable with a mastectomy and chemo but right as her life seemed to stabilize a stabbing back pain (reminiscent of Paul Kalinithi) made itself known. This turned out to be the harbinger of Stage 4 cancer which unfortunately was not curable. To add insult to injury, her mother's cancer stopped responding to treatment and she opted to stop her treatment. Overwhelming and almost unbelievably melodramatic as this all sounds Nina chose to view each day through a positive lens. It is obvious to me that she was a special person with a whole lot of spirit. Sadly, she passed away before final publication of her book but her legacy still lives and breathes on each page of her memoir. I'm sorry we can't enjoy more writing from her in the future. 9/10
    • 5/5
      I’m approaching the end of this book and it’s exquisite but torturously sad. Her sentences are perfect and as I read them, I am feeling what she must have felt or a fragment of it: knowing you’re about to leave your two beautiful boys forever, much too early. 💔
    • 4/5
      This memoir, about a woman dying of breast cancer, is heart-wrenching, funny, poignant, and pretty much amazing. Everyone should read this. Don't have much more to say than that!
    • 3/5
      I debated with myself for weeks over whether I would write a review of The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs, when I knew my review would be less than glowingly positive, as so many reviews I've read have been. I was hesitant, for one, because I didn't want to come across as callously unsympathetic to the story of a woman who was courageous enough to tell the poignant story of her suffering through the throes of cancer and chemotherapy, and all while raising her two children, being a devoted wife, and caring for her mother who also suffered and eventually passed away from cancer.However, at some point it dawned on me during my self-debate that I'm fortunate to live in a country in which conscientious and compassionate individuals can express their opinion without fear of being harshly castigated. So with that said, I was initially drawn to The Bright Hour by the many glowingly supportive reviews and blurbs I'd discovered. It was clear to me that the book's publishers decided to promote the memoir by comparing it to the truly remarkable memoir When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. For anyone who's read and loved Kalanithi's memoir, such a comparison is indeed very high praise. So I came to Riggs' memoir with high expectations. I'd even read somewhere that Riggs' widow and Kalanithi's widow went on a dual promotional book tour together.And so, while reading the early portions of the book, I felt good about having decided to read it. However, about halfway through the book, something about it began not to sit well with me and I gradually began to lose interest in reading it anymore. This was puzzling to me at first; primarily because of the overwhelmingly positive press the book continues to receive and also because I so wanted to deeply appreciate a book written by a published poet who quotes extensively from her distant relative Ralph Waldo Emerson and Montaigne. On top of which, there are some passages in the book that impressed me initially, at least, as imaginatively poetic.I should also say I am a big devote of reading memoirs like When Breath Becomes Air; that is, memoirs written by people with truly extraordinary stories to tell, and which are told in compelling ways. Other such memoirs that I believe fall in that category are Why I Left Goldman Sachs, Dying to Be Me, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, and Do the KIND Thing: Think Boundlessly, Work Purposefully, Live Passionately.Where Riggs' memoir differs from these books, I find, is that while it's truly heartbreaking that Riggs was diagnosed with cancer and she deserves some credit for writing an articulate memoir while surely suffering the pain of her cancer and the side effects of her chemotherapy; what I realized is that the life Riggs lived before and after her cancer diagnosis was glaringly average and quotidian. For example, she spends one passage contemplating whether she should splurge her and her husband's money on an expensive, new sofa; Riggs admits that she and her husband had never previously bought a new sofa during their marriage. Moreover, I question why her distant kinship with Emerson would have, in and of itself, warranted her extensively quoting him throughout the book. (Not surprisingly, the title of the book is taken from a passage by Emerson.) I was also puzzled why Riggs quotes repeatedly from Montaigne. Her quoting of Emerson and Montaigne certainly gives her book a veneer of high literary cache. Finally, what really ruined this book for me is that, in my final analysis, Riggs failed to write compellingly enough about her otherwise routine life.
    • 5/5
      I don't know what to say about this, except that it's lovely. Beautiful and sad, but also really funny. Well, and just really real. Riggs faces her illness and awareness of her mortality with such powerful courage and insight, honesty and humor. She has a fierce passion to dig deep, to fully experience, to discover and explore the fullness of everything she is dealing with, to recognize the beautiful and profound, and to think through and articulate her fears and hopes. As much as possible, given her illness and the exhausting treatments, she is determined not to miss the everyday moments of beauty and sweetness with her children, friends, and family. As she says to her husband early on in the book, “I have to love these days in the same way I love any other. There might not be a 'normal' from here on out.” I love the wideness and depth of her sympathy – her ability to appreciate the struggles of others even as she is suffering herself. And I love how she brings in Montaigne and Emerson, all mixed in with reflections and stories about her children, parents, travels, and treatments.
    • 4/5
      Best for: People who enjoy memoirs such as When Breath Becomes AirIn a nutshell: Now-deceased writer Nina Riggs documents her illness from diagnosis onwardLine that sticks with me: “These are the things we all say at the end of book club now: ‘I love you.’ Of course we do. Why haven’t we been saying that all along?”Why I chose it: Memoir + death = A Lollygagger staple.Review: Author Nina Riggs gives us a gift with this book, in that it isn’t filled with terror and it isn’t overly optimistic. I’d imagine that both of those styles of memoir are necessary for people depending on how they view life, but it seems necessary to also have a book that deals with illness and terminal diagnoses via a third path. I won’t say this is more ‘realistic’ that a book full of fear or of hope, because I know everyone experiences life differently.Ms. Riggs has two sons, but this isn’t a book addressed directly to them (although in the acknowledgments her husband confirms that they hope their sons will better know their mother as they read and re-read it over the years). It isn’t directed to her husband. It doesn’t even feel as though it is directed at women facing similar life events. It’s just a book that explores life and death via the unexpected twists and the fully expected turns. And it is lovely.Ms. Riggs is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, so there is a lot of discussion of nature and of him. She is also a very big fan of Montaigne, so he pops up frequently as well. But so do her best friends, and family, and neighbors. She takes her kids to school. She goes through radiation treatment. She buys a wig. She goes on vacation. She has moments of fear and panic, but even she acknowledges that the movie version of her life will likely have more dramatic scenes than her reality. Her writing style is lovely. The chapters are often very short (sometimes only a paragraph), and while it could have ventured into overly flowery language, it straddles that line of near poetry and reality.
    • 4/5
      I deeply appreciate reading perspectives on death and dying. These always thrum with life and are very poignant and intimate. When Breath Becomes Air is amazing, as is The Last Lecture and Being Mortal. This has moments of beauty throughout and Nina is someone I would have loved to have in my life. For me, this didn't quite generate the same emotional impact and rawness that other works in this genre did and have.
    • 5/5
      This is a heartbreaking and uplifting story of a young mother diagnosed with terminal breast cancer who chronicles her life both before and during treatment. She leaves this legacy for her children. It was an amazing book.
    • 4/5
      Thirty-eight-year-old Nina Riggs writes her memoir of metastatic breast cancer in snippets and vignettes that are gently illuminating and often funny despite a tragic outcome. She’s not overtly sad here. Instead, she’s thoughtful and philosophical as she turns to the writings of Montaigne and of her great-great-great-grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, to deal not only with her own treatment and mortality but also her mother’s death from myeloma and her young son’s diagnosis with diabetes."So, you’re watching a cancer show?" [Nina's husband] says sheepishly. "Why would you do that?""I don’t know," [she says]. "I guess it makes me feel a little more normal. Plus it has really terrible writing, so it makes me laugh."I ask a version of that question to myself ("So I’m reading a cancer memoir -- why would I do that?") and come up with a partly identical answer. It puts my own non-cancer problems in perspective ... plus it has really lovely writing, so it fills me with awe.(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)