Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book will be released in the US on March 4th, 2025 from Catapult.

Some books demand to be read slowly, their sentences savored like incantations. Pieces You’ll Never Get Back: A Memoir of Unlikely Survival by Samina Ali is one such book—lyrical, haunting, and deeply introspective. In the wake of a harrowing medical crisis, Ali stitches together a self that was shattered, using memory, faith, and writing as both tools and battlegrounds. Her story is not just one of survival but of reclamation, of choosing how to piece herself back together after nearly being lost forever.

Ali’s memoir begins with the traumatic birth of her son, a moment that should have been sacred but instead becomes a site of violence and neglect at the hands of white doctors who refuse to see her, speak to her, or listen to her warnings. Their failure to recognize a rare form of preeclampsia, one that originated in her liver rather than presenting as typical hypertension, leads to HELLP syndrome—an often-fatal condition that leaves her brain swollen, scattered, and broken by strokes. When she awakens from a coma, she has only the most rudimentary functions, speaking in her first language, Urdu, but unable to grasp the reality of her own motherhood. The journey that follows is one of painful reconstruction, of filling in the gaps left by memory loss and medical trauma, of navigating an American medical system that failed her while also reckoning with the patriarchal traditions of her Muslim upbringing.

What makes Pieces You’ll Never Get Back so compelling is Ali’s refusal to accept easy narratives. She was dubbed the “Miracle Girl” by her doctors, yet she questions what kind of mercy strips a mother of her ability to recognize her own child. She reexamines Islamic theology, looking at conceptions of the afterlife, the sacred origins of the Qur’an, and the faith’s reverence for the written word—all through the lens of a woman whose mind has betrayed her but whose survival depended on language. As she struggles with aphasia and cognitive impairment, writing becomes the very thing that allows her to heal.

Ali’s prose is as fractured and luminous as the memories she tries to reconstruct. Her writing is steeped in sensory detail, moving with rhythmic intensity between the past and the present, between what is known and what is lost. The memoir’s strongest moments lie in its exploration of identity—not just the binaries of American and Indian, Muslim and secular, pre-stroke and post-stroke—but the fluid, shifting reality of selfhood when one’s own body becomes unfamiliar.

If there is any shortcoming in Pieces You’ll Never Get Back, it’s that the ending feels slightly rushed. After so much meticulous excavation of memory, the final chapters don’t linger long enough in the aftermath of Ali’s recovery. And yet, perhaps that is fitting—survival is not a neat conclusion, but an ongoing act.

This is a book that does not flinch from pain, nor does it romanticize resilience. Instead, it honors the messiness of recovery, the grief of what is lost, and the grace found in rebuilding. Ali’s memoir is a testament to the power of writing, of reclaiming one’s narrative when the world tries to silence it. An essential read for anyone who has ever had to fight to be heard, to be seen, to survive.

📖 Recommended For: Readers drawn to lyrical and introspective memoirs, narratives of medical trauma and recovery, and explorations of cultural identity; those interested in the intersections of faith, memory, and storytelling.

🔑 Key Themes: Trauma and Healing, Memory and Identity, Cultural Heritage and Faith, The Power of Writing as Survival.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Medical Content (severe), Medical Trauma (severe), Racism (minor), Misogyny (minor), Death of a Parent (minor), Cancer (minor).

At the age of 29, Samina Ali, encountered a life-threatening ordeal during childbirth due to uncontrolled eclampsia. Although she survived, she sustained a significant brain injury and entered a coma, awakening to discover that she had lost the majority of her memories, including those of her husband and newborn son. Medical professionals predicted that she would never fully recuperate or resume her writing career. Defying these grim forecasts, Ali embarked on a formidable path of rehabilitation. The emotional turmoil of reconciling her former self with her altered reality was profound, necessitating a number of years before she begins to feel a semblance of normalcy. In her memoir, Samina Ali delves into themes mortality, rehabilitation, and motherhood. The novel was easy to read and interesting. It would have been interesting to get more accounts of her time in the hospital, from the viewpoints of her family. It is amazing that with everything that she endured, she was able to reclaim her life and her career.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance review copy in exchange for my honest review.

The experience this book describes is terrifying--and I am so glad the writer wrote this book. A lovely mix of personal memoir, reporting, and lyric essay here.