The Wall

Recommended by Susan Block, Founding Chair of the Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital

It is a novel with an unlikely premise, beginning with what seems to be a cataclysmic extinction event that leaves behind a solitary woman alone, trapped in a forest, with no clarity about what happened. It is the story of the internal life she reconstructs out of the ruins of her earlier life, and the relationships she develops with four animals, whom she finds, or who find her. These relationships are rich and full of tenderness and love, awe, and mutual dependency. She reflects on her internal changes, her body’s evolution from the constant manual labor of keeping herself and her animals alive, her past, and how to make meaning isolated from other humans. It is a beautiful and moving and thought-provoking reading experience.