Recovery | Free Book - Novels Ebooks

The Lost Art of Convalescence

Publisher:Penguin Publishing Group

Published:September 2023

ISBN:9780593512005

Title:Recovery

Author:Gavin Francis

Imprint:Penguin Life

Language:English

Number of Pages:144

“An essential book for our times, full of wisdom, compassion and sound advice. Every patient needs a copy of this gem.” –Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment

A gentle, expert guide to the secrets of recovery, showing why we need it and how to do it better

For many of us, time spent in recovery—from a broken leg, a virus, chronic illness, or the crisis of depression or anxiety—can feel like an unwelcome obstacle on the road to health. Modern medicine too often assumes that once doctors have prescribed a course of treatment, healing takes care of itself. But recovery isn’t something that “just happens.” It is an act that we engage in and that has the potential to transform our lives, if only we can find ways to learn its rhythms and invest our time, energy, and participation.

Drawing on thirty years of medicine, and on insights from practitioners, psychologists, and writers across history, physician Gavin Francis delivers a profound, practical, and deeply hopeful guide to recovery. Rejecting the idea that healing is passive, Recovery offers tools and wisdom for convalescence, and shows how tending to our bodies, environments, and perspectives can help us move through the landscape of illness—and come out the other side whole.

In The Press

“Recovery is an essential book for our times, full of wisdom, compassion and sound advice. Every patient needs a copy of this gem.” –Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment

"Healing can be maddeningly slow work, Gavin Francis recognizes, but it offers us the opportunity to live differently. Beyond the fantasy of the quick and easy cure is the reality of living with and through our physical limitations, which requires creativity. Recovery offers inspiration and advice for practicing this lost art. Throughout, Francis is alert to the political and economic forces that undermine our efforts." –Eula Biss, author of Having and Being Had and On Immunity

“We spend too much time thinking about illness and hardly enough thinking about recovery and recuperation. Gavin Francis’s literary talent combined with his years as a seasoned medical practitioner make Recovery a unique and delightful read.” –Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water and Cutting for Stone

About the Author

Gavin Francis is a general physician with more than 30 years of training and practice in medicine. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners. He is also an award-winning writer and a contributor to the Guardian, Times, New York Review of Books, Granta, and the London Review of Books. He’s authored eight books, including Empire Antarctica, Adventures in Human Being, and Shapeshifters: On Medicine & Human Change, which was a book of the year in the Sunday Times. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.