Seven years later, the cancer has robbed him of his sight, mobility, marriage and (most significantly) his ability to teach. Despite this, he remains thankful for every day, and how he redefined himself and his life in light of these losses forms the heart of The Priority List.
A combination of memoir and inspirational text it touches on important episodes in his childhood, his approach to teaching and the experience of illness, culminating in a life-affirming journey across the US that reunites him with many of his former students. These encounters reveal they have influenced him as profoundly as he influenced them, and allow him to come to terms with the fact he cannot - and need not - manage alone.
Menasche has written this book to inspire other people facing adversity to see that where there is a purpose, there is a life worth living, and the bravery with which he approaches both his life and his death is impressive.
This makes it doubly difficult to criticise his work, but I found myself struggling with certain aspects of his approach, in particular the way each chapter concludes with a letter from one of his students explaining how he changed their lives.
While there is much to be learnt from this book and I have no doubt that he was a gifted and inspirational teacher, being told this repeatedly left me feeling uncomfortable; he remarks at one point that he heard things that are usually only said after someone is gone and, reading The Priority List really was like listening to a man providing his own eulogy, an experience that felt disturbingly self-promotional.
This probably reflects the fact Americans are more comfortable about talking about themselves than we are, but I'm not sure how well it will be received by a New Zealand audience.
- Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
