“The Choice” by Dr. Edith Eger was recommended to me by a friend going through cancer, and it really helped her. I found this book easy to read, captivating for the most part, and well written. Eger draws conclusions for how to live life fully, in gratitude with strength, resolve and goals after her horrifying experiences in the Holocaust. Her message too is that we don’t need a Holocaust to be able to be heroes, to make a difference, to help others, to learn how to be happy, and to grow.

From the preface, it’s a “...universal message of hope and possibility to all who are trying to free themselves from pain and suffering. Whether imprisoned by bad marriages, destructive families, or jobs they hate, or imprisoned within the barbed wire of self-limiting beliefs that trap them in their own minds.” And from Eger: “Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional.” Wise words for the rampant victimization (of race, gender, politics) that we impose on ourselves in today’s America.

Her story is indeed incredible; even after I have read so many stories of the Holocaust, including the excellent “Man’s Search for Meaning” and “The Hiding Place,” which are similar in experience and message. Eger describes her childhood, her low self-esteem, her survival tactics, including a way to talk to herself that helped her feel empowered. She told herself too, somehow, something good would come of this. She starved; she knew her parents had been killed. She participated in a Death March. She suffered incredibly, including breaking her back. The inmates dealt with disease, the elements, Mengele. She watched a boy being shot repeatedly as target practice. Truly horrific visions, sights and sounds.

Eventually she is liberated. The second half of the book is more autobiography, and becomes more self-involved—her career, her marriage into a wealthy family, her marital problems, her travels, dealing with the Communist take-over, and fleeing to America.

She connects the milestones of her life often to what she learned from her Holocaust experience, which is insightful. But something about the book does not put it on par with “Man’s Search for Meaning” or “The Hiding Place,” even though Eger has the credentials and experience. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe after the rescue, the book delves too deeply into her personal life after the Holocaust? She does try to relate things to the Holocaust. It was odd how she clung to the illusion of love with Eric, her “crush” who died in a camp, even as her marriage was disintegrating so many years later.

She struggled with allowing herself credit, and talks down her many achievements, like earning her degrees, aware that she is doing that. But that sense of poor self-esteem happened before the Holocaust. Her mother was pretty brutal to her verbally, and instilled in her feelings of inadequacy—yet she never seems to recognize this. She writes “It’s important to assign blame to the perpetrators,” but her mother was one of them.

(One error: early on she describes a patient as having a daughter who was dying of hemophilia. This is inaccurate. It would be extremely rare to find a woman with hemophilia [possible but rare] and she would not be “dying of hemophilia,” like cancer.)

I agree with other reviewers that this seems like two books; there is something a bit choppy in the way it flows. Calling her patients “honey” all the time seems condescending and unprofessional, and also agree with a reviewer that the way she dealt with the patient with an eating disorder was a bit odd.

But overall, highly recommended, especially if you have not read the other two books mentioned. This book has important messages and lessons for living a better life, for being at peace, for making sense of suffering. We can and should learn from those who have survived and endured. Eger does us an enormous favor by sharing her experiences and life lessons with us all.

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The Choice: Embrace the Possible