A Debut That Shouldn’t Go Unnoticed.

While happily nearing my goal of reading 100 books in 2019, I opened the 96th with a trepidation not felt with any other title that year (if ever). It was, “Why Didn’t I Notice Her Before,” by Beth Cramer.

Understandably, a memoir that recounts the cancer journey of a wife and mother that is subtitled, “A Memoir About Dying to Live” might give anyone pause. That the author is a dear friend made the prospect doubly fraught. Would the fact that she’d been rather reticent about the issue (with me anyway) make this feel like an invasion of privacy? Would I be shown cracks in a beloved couple’s marriage whose vows I had witnessed? Or lastly, would I simply find it a disappointing read… and be forced to find something to praise at our next group brunch?

Beth is an editor and director, whose book has been applauded for its “filmic storytelling.”

Far from it. Not surprising really, considering the many inspired—if wine-fueled—intellectual tete-a-tetes we regularly engage in. The surprise was in just HOW insightful and compelling her narrative was. And how raw and resonant her prose.

The author has a rare talent for mining small, but lasting lessons—whether reflecting on the host of new parenting concerns that come with her diagnosis or weighing the dueling emotions she feels towards an overly attentive family. Her argument for the empowering effect of “F_ck it” is both layered and laugh-out-loud funny. And those windows into her marriage that I worried over were, in the end, touching reminders that the coupling of any two personalities—by its very nature—is bound to cause some feather ruffling, friction and emotional dissonance. The true test of love is how we live with them.

I applaud Beth’s refusal to be cancer’s role model. But hope she’s okay being a literary one. New York is filled with wanna-be authors and their imagined books. But here’s someone who sat down and wrote hers, despite (or because of) hugely challenging circumstances.

Her personal recounting reveals the universal truth that “appreciating life” is complicated. Making her debut as effective as anything else I read last year.