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Description
Who are you when your brain is not you?' Jane Lapotaire is one of the lucky ones. Many people do not survive, let alone live intelligently and well again once they have suffered cerebral haemorrhage. In the long haul back to life - 'nearly dying was the easy bit' - she's learned much, some of it very hard lessons. Some friendships became casualties; family relations had to be redefined; and her work as an actress took a severe battering. The stress of living is felt that much more keenly when 'sometimes I still feel as if I am walking around with my brain outside my body. A brain still all too available for smashing by noise, physical jostling, or any form of harshness'. But she has survived and now believes it herself when people say how lucky she is. This is a very moving, darkly funny, honest book about what happens when the 'you' you've known all your life is no longer the same you.… (more)
User reviews
I found this a very sad story - professional and personal support failed Jane, and she was left alone to struggle with her physical and mental condition after surgery. Her son couldn't cope with the change in his mother's personality, friends were scared off by her temper, and it took a year before a doctor offered her therapy to deal with the stress of living with brain damage. Outwardly, of course, once the stitches had healed and her hair grown back, people expected Jane to return to 'normal' - but what is normal?
Honest and humorous, Jane has a way with words that makes this difficult subject very easy to read. She puts the reader in her place, so that we are scared when the man in the Tube station chases after her, heckling and bullying because she was 'rude' to another employee; we understand her confusion when so-called friends scream back at her; and every heart-wrenching sob is felt through the words on the page. I was drawn into Jane's world by her friendly style, and stayed hooked on her lyrical language to the very last line: 'Lucky, grateful, slower, fatter and wiser.' An amazing woman.