One of the Marks recommended this fine novel of an ICU stay. Mark’s the kind of friend whose book recommendations you take. He likes the immaculately written dramatization of life’s questions. Maybe you’re a Mark if you treasure lines like: “I had been in a cage, I thought, an animal in a cage; there was joy in movement, in being out of doors, detached from machines. Try to remember this, I admonished myself, since I knew it would fade. All happiness fades, or does for me; misery digs deep gouges in memory, sets the course of the self, I sometimes think, it lays down the tracks one is condemned to move along, whereas happiness leaves no trace. Remember this, I said to myself. Why should only suffering be a vale of soul-making, why shouldn’t the soul be made of this moment, too, this unremarkable moment, remember this.” Be a Mark.