DIARY OF A DYING GIRL

In this adaptation of her memoir for adults, Smith, who died in 2017, chronicles life with cystic fibrosis from age 16 to 25.

For Smith, a Jewish girl from California, time is “the meanest of forces.” Inextricable from her accounts of sports, dating, Hawaiian vacations, college at Stanford, and post-graduation freelance writing is the fact that her future is altered and shortened by CF, a progressive genetic disease that affects the lungs and other organs, and Burkholderia cenocepacia, a deadly bacteria that further compromises her lungs. Though Smith’s stream-of-consciousness writing is sometimes difficult to follow, readers will glean thought-provoking insights as she matures. Readers navigating chronic illness will especially appreciate Smith’s candid, angry, and occasionally dark-humored anecdotes of coughing up blood in public, undergoing embarrassing and painful procedures, processing body image insecurities and physical limitations as her condition declines, and fielding hope and disappointment as she awaits a double lung transplant. Smith’s musings on her eventual death and its impact on her family are particularly poignant. Acknowledging the privilege of having supportive parents able to negotiate with insurance companies, Smith soberingly notes that “patients who don’t have that are the patients who die as a result of bureaucratic bullshit.” Heart-wrenching entries from her mother, aunt, and boyfriend, Jack, detail Smith’s grueling transplant recovery and complications that led to her death. In an afterword, Jack movingly explores his grief and his relationship with Smith.

Illuminating and heartbreaking.