How Are You? is told as a mosaic: hospital diary entries, letters, and memories of youth weave together into an intimate and unsentimental portrait of a woman who learns, slowly and painfully, what it means to truly answer that question. Through humor and grief that never cancel each other out, the narrator guides us through a radical re-examination of identity in moments of greatest vulnerability.
The title — a question that echoes throughout the novel — carries a different weight each time it is asked. Sometimes it is small talk. Sometimes it is the only thing that matters.
A story about illness and survival, about friendships that last a lifetime, about loves that arrive at the wrong moment, and about the sea as a place of refuge and transformation. Above all, it is a story about a woman who, when life tried to write her off, decided to write her own ending.
"You could literally write a book." — "I have, my dear."
