An Exercise in Uncertainty: A Memoir of Illness and Hope

Former New York magazine deputy editor Gluck highlights his experiences as a cancer survivor in this touching debut. In 2003, a 38-year-old Gluck learned he had multiple myeloma, a “rare and incurable bone marrow malignancy,” and was told he had at most three years to live. (Doctors only detected the disease because Gluck asked for an MRI after slipping on ice outside of his office.) A new father, Gluck suddenly found his days revolving around Kafkaesque attempts to navigate health insurance and to schedule tests. All the while, he continued to beat the odds, and he credits the fact that he’s still alive today to his early detection of the myeloma. Gluck offers sharp reflections about the taxing uncertainty of life in remission, candidly recounting fights with his wife about her stoicism (“What kind of person doesn’t dissolve into a puddle of tears or break down when their spouse is diagnosed with cancer?”) and acknowledging that, given his cancer’s incurability, he “feels as though I’m locked in a basement that’s slowly filling with water.” His love of fly-fishing (it “may not be my church or my therapy, but I began to use it for similar purposes”) offers welcome levity. Readers grappling with difficult diagnoses—for themselves or their loved ones—will find Gluck’s perspective refreshing. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (June)