The author, Jean-Dominique Bauby, was a successful editor-in-chief at Elle France when one day after work, on his way to pick up his son, he suffered a massive stroke. As he describes, in the past this would have meant certain death "but improved resuscitation techniques have now prolonged and refined the agony." He came out the other side of a multi-day coma paralyzed from head to toe, unable to move or speak. His left eyelid blinking was his only method of communication.
On the outside, he inhabited an incapable body. But inside, he was alive.
Rather than using a standard alphabet, a special board was created starting with the most frequently used letters in the French language, descending to the least used. Anyone who visited Jean-Dominique had to painstakingly make their way through each letter of the alphabet while he blinked in the affirmative and they transcribed what he was trying to convey.
This gruelling technique was what he used with an assistant, Claude, who helped get his thoughts from his head onto the page to create this book. He would memorize and rework passages throughout the night and have them ready to spell out when she visited him during the day. How he managed to get coherent, engaging, richly textured chapters that marked his life pre- and post-trauma is truly a remarkable feat. It's not just a series of facts. It's a book about the intricacies of life. It's a book about human enlightenment.
It's not simply due to the extravagant difficulty and unique voice that I'm awarding this book with so many stars. Jean-Dominique shows us the other side of paraplegia and disability. If we can learn to disregard the human outer shell, with patience and care, we can begin to comprehend what extremely insightful thoughts and dreams lie within a fully awake mind.
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