This Really Isn’t About You

In 2014 I moved back to the United States after living abroad for fourteen years, my whole adult life, because my father was dying from cancer.

Six weeks after I arrived in New York City, my father died.
Six months after that I learned that I had inherited the gene that would cause me cancer too.

When Jean Hannah Edelstein’s world overturned she was forced to confront some of the big questions in life: how do we cope with grief? How does living change when we realize we’re not invincible? Does knowing our likely fate make it harder or easier to face the future? How do you motivate yourself to go on your OkCupid date when you’re struggling with your own mortality?

Written in her inimitable, wry and insightful voice, Jean Hannah Edelstein’s memoir is by turns heart-breaking, hopeful and yet also disarmingly funny. This Really Isn’t About You is a book about finding your way in life. Which is to say, it’s a book about discovering you are not really in control of that at all.