The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Edith Eger promises a memoir of survival and delivers a profound master class in resilience and healing: Holocaust survivor turned psychologist? ✓ Unflinching honesty? ✓ Transformative insights that actually empower? ✓ “The Choice” will leave you humbled, uplifted, and forever changed. Dr. Edith bears her scars with courage and grace, inviting you into the darkest corners of the human soul, showing you how to light your own way out. Her journey from the death camp to her therapy couch is both heartbreaking and triumphant, and you feel every fear, every flicker of hope, as if it were your own. – Unvarnished memoir: Eger doesn’t shy away from the horrors she endured, yet never lets pain overshadow the power of choice. – Psychological insight: Each chapter distills hard-won wisdom—how to move from victimhood to agency, from bitterness to forgiveness. – Practical healing: Whether you’ve faced trauma or simply wrestle with regret, her exercises and reflections offer a tangible path forward. Moments that linger- When she describes the moment she chose to help a fellow prisoner despite her own suffering, you understand what it means to seize humanity in the face of inhumanity. And when she recounts guiding her patients to “choose to live,” you hear her gentle, unwavering voice urging you to stand up for your own life. “The Choice” doesn’t just tell a survival story, it equips you to write your own. It’s the rare book that makes you weep for what was lost, cheer for what’s possible, and believe that even in our deepest wounds, we hold the power to heal. If you read only one memoir this year, let it be this one. 5 stars—and I’ll carry its lessons with me always.

This is a beautiful, absolutely pitch-perfect memoir by Dr. Edith Eger. I was not familiar with Dr. Eger prior to reading this, and I am grateful to her for sharing her story. The book is organized into four sections: Prison, Escape, Freedom, and Healing. I would describe it as three parts memoir, one part therapy. It would be enough, simply for nanogeneraian Dr. Eger to tell us her story and share the important events she witnessed in her lifetime. But she is not satisfied to make this book only about her experience. She is clearly a committed therapist who understands pain and forgiveness uniquely, and has a very powerful message that to truly live a full life, we need to make the choice not only to forgive, but to forgive ourselves. I describe the book as pitch-perfect because from the introduction, Dr. Eger explains that there is no heirarchy when it comes to suffering. She does not tell her story so that the reader will minimize their own suffering in comparison, that would just be another way of judging ourselves. As a therapist, she understands that someone whose suffering may seem superficial to others, is generally attributed to something much more deeply rooted, and representative of a much larger pain. I find it extraordinary that she is capable of empathizing with others to this extent. When you read her story, and I hope you do, you will understand the extent of her personal suffering. Not only what she endured in her youth, but as an adult coming to terms with everything she lost, and finding a way to let it be her strength, instead of imagining what her life would have been had it not been interrupted by the cruelty and injustice of the Holocaust. I can not find the words to describe the depth of her compassion. Life is about choices, and I am guilty of the destructive thinking that Dr. Eger drescribes in the book. In my Midewestern upbringing, I was raised to take responsibility for my choices. I pride myself in this responsibility. What this book has made me realize that often in my experience, this has been a punishing idea - there are choices, and there are consequences. But life is not that simple, there are choices and more choices. Often we choose to punish ourselves. In doing so, we are imprisoning ourselves with our own beliefs - of not feeling worthy, a fear of making a bad choice... The author is open about choices she made in her own life, and that they may not have been the best ones. Everyone suffers. Everyone has endured the consequences of their own poor choices. But to live our best life, we must continue to make choices, instead of allowing ourselves to be imprisoned by our past. Thank you, Dr. Edith Eva Eger for sharing your story and your wisdom. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy of The Choice for review. I enjoyed it so much I purchased a copy from Amazon as a gift.

I have read and re-read this powerful book, and I am now giving copies to my family because I believe the message within is so very important. Dr. Eger, has humanity in every pore of her being, and I wish she was in the Midwest so we could meet her in person. I found myself learning so much through reading this book, learning things about myself, and recognizing things in those that I love, I am hopeful that I can improve as a person and help my loved ones now I have this very valuable information. Everyone has trauma or upset in their lives of some type or another, but few of us know how to handle these things. Dr. Eger shows us with real compassion how to look at ourselves, and how to forgive ourselves, which ultimately is the most challenging thing.. I wish more psychologists were like her, most that I have encountered lack the humanity needed to help guide a person to health, most seem to be talking textbooks and do not look at the real person in front of them, they just try to fit them into a textbook diagnosis and I do not see that ever being an answer. The idea of meaning and purpose in life makes perfect sense, and I truly believe that is what human beings need above all else to thrive in this world. I highly recommend this book, it truly is amazing in every way. Thank you Dr. Eger for your wonderful book, it is a privilege to know your story and gain so much wisdom from it and from you.

Edith Eger is amazing! A heartwrenching story that gives new meaning to “never give up.”

Excellent

Me gustó mucho la forma en la que agrega todo un método psicológico para manejo de situaciones difíciles sin necesidad de ser el clásico libro de texto teórico. También qué me dio otra perspectiva del holocausto. La de una niña y vaya que fueron duros algunos capítulos. Creo que es un libro recomendable para quien ha tenido un evento traumatico o doloroso y quiere mejorar su vida. Y para quienes no lo han tenido también!

It’s the story of Nazi holocaust survivers. Similar to ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank, who recorded her family sufferings in a dairy, while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died of typhus in a concentration camp in 1945. The diary was retrieved by Anne's father, Otto Frank, the family's only known survivor, just after the war was over, and published in a book form to let the world know about their life struggles. The present book writer, Edith Eger is also a sufferer of holocaust, but luckily survives. In the process, she becomes witness to the killing of her parents and almost escapes from the jaws of death. The horrors of the holocaust didn't break her. In fact, they helped her learn to live again with a life-affirming strength and a truly remarkable resilience (the author is a practising therapist). It reinforces the essence of human spirit to struggle,survive and succeed.

One of the best books I’ve ever read. Everything we feel, it’s our choice.