'Choy's humanity, and his deep connections to both people and the world around him, come to the fore in his new book, Not Yet, a harrowing, enthralling and incandescent memoir of his brushes with death in the early years of this decade ... It's a tour de force of writing, confident in its ability to balance seeming contradictions: it is at once immersive and removed, intense but thoughtful, and all rendered in a tone not quite clinical, but certainly free of histrionics and sentimentality ... Not Yet is a powerful work, an account of a life almost lost, a questioning of how a life should be lived, and an inquiry into the role of the past and its impact on the present. It is a chronicle of finding oneself after the deepest of traumas, in the arms and eyes of friends. It is a work that blends tension and sadness with joy and contemplation. And it is a reminder, as if we needed one, of why Wayson Choy is beloved, as a writer and as a man.'

'Acclaimed Canadian author Wayson Choy makes beautiful sense of life through his brushes with death.'

'Despite its surface dealings, this gentle book is more than a tale of how one man faced death and survived. Underneath and parallel to the main narrative, several subthemes bubble away at their own pace. They intertwine with the main story and with each other, yet they always maintain their own coherence and gravitas and they make this simple-seeming book a richly textured, intimate and endearing account of crisis, friendship and wisdom.'

'Celebrated Canadian author Wayson Choy's memoir is a passionate, sensitive and beautiful exploration of the importance of family. Framed by his near-death encounters, it is also a manifesto for embracing life and learning to cherish each day.'

'It's hard to imagine how a memoir that pays such meticulous attention to the details of respiratory illness and mortality, surgery and syringes and clinically induced hallucination could be so engaging. But the miracle of Not Yet lies not just in Choy's superb prose, or even the humour and honesty with which he details his life, but in the way he chronicles his deep connections to those around him; in the way he illuminates those countless invisible kind acts that define many a so-called ordinary human life on his way to creating a new blueprint for living.'

'Choy ranks among the finest writers in this country ... Not Yet is another building block in Choy’s astonishing, unique, ongoing, multi-volume, multi-genre portrait — two novels and two memoirs so far, all beautifully written — of who he is and how he came to be himself.'

'Choy's message is in his quiet title — not yet — and in the delicacy and clarity of his prose ... Choy has delivered a fine mantra for living well and enduring almost dying, twice.'

'Choy avoids tidy homilies or maudlin melodrama in favour of a matter-of-fact tone. This makes the images he chooses all the more vivid and delightful ... Subtle glints of humour ... keep the writing far from the sentimental or precious ... In lovely prose, he captures the beauty and imperfection of being human.'

Wayson Choy's 'memoir is itself a lesson in how to write elegant, creative nonfiction. Particularly striking and effective is Choy's use of self-deprecating humour to undercut the air of self-absorption intrinsic to this genre.'