Rehearsals for Dying

Digressions on Love and Cancer

By: Ariel Gore

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Paperback | 1 July 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
304 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.6 x 14.0 x 2.54

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An expansive, darkly funny, and deeply personal reflection on the reality of living with—and dying from—metastatic breast cancer.

Deena stepped out of the shower and opened her towel in the steam. “Does my breast look weird?” These words irrevocably change the lives of writer Ariel Gore and her wife. As they descend into a world of doctors and tests, medications and insurance, sickness and treatments and hope and pain and more, they discover just how little they truly knew—despite the awareness campaigns and hyper-visible pink ribbons—about the reality of breast cancer. Over the four years following Deena’s terminal diagnosis, Gore does what she always does, no matter how difficult or personal the subject: she writes about it.

With keen insights, empathy, and humor, Ariel Gore braids together the story of Deena’s experience, her own role as a caretaker, narratives from others living with breast cancer, literary reflections on illness, and reportage on the history of breast cancer and the $200 billion industry that capitalizes on and profits from breast cancer screenings and treatments. Rehearsals for Dying investigates and challenges everything we think we know about breast cancer. It goes beyond awareness to knowledge, presenting a rich, nuanced, heartbreaking, and hopeful portrait of what it is to be diagnosed with, treat, and live with breast cancer in the twenty-first century.

Industry Reviews

Praise for Ariel Gore

"An insightful observer." -New York Times on Fuck Happiness

"This book mimics the messy, discursive texture of memory-of life. . . . Inventive and affecting."-Kirkus Reviews on We Were Witches

"Gore tells her story with such verve and wit I missed my train stop reading it."-Lambda Literary Review on We Were Witches

"This book is a magical field guide that will set the crap that needs to burn on fire, and compost the living shit out of the wrong world toward revolution, revelation, reformation, and release. I'm all in."-Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of The Chronology of Water, on Hexing the Patriarchy

"Just holding this book in my hands makes me feel giddy with hope."-Karen Karbo, author of In Praise of Difficult Women, on Hexing the Patriarchy

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