Memoir

this truly remarkable insight into this lady’s recovery process after a brain injury. This really was such an interesting book which Lauren explains all different aspects of what actually happened to her and how she had to have a speech therapist to help her find her voice again. This is one fascinating medical journal
Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the arc xx ( )

this truly remarkable insight into this lady’s recovery process after a brain injury. This really was such an interesting book which Lauren explains all different aspects of what actually happened to her and how she had to have a speech therapist to help her find her voice again. This is one fascinating medical journal
Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for the arc xx ( )

Lauren Marks was twenty-seven years old when, in the middle of a karaoke performance, an aneurysm burst in her brain. She was lucky to survive, but the damage left her with aphasia: a great difficulty not only in producing coherent speech, but in perceiving just how badly affected her speech was. It also left her unable to read, gave her difficulties in following the speech of others, and even silenced her own inner voice. It also affected her memory. She wasn't exactly afflicted with amnesia, but she found it difficult to bring to mind or emotionally connect with personal memories. Over time, thanks to brain plasticity and speech therapy, much of her facility with words came back, but what she refers to as "the rupture" was clearly not only a physical rupture in her brain, but a discontinuity between the person she used to be and the person she had become.

In this memoir, Marks writes thoughtfully about her experiences after "the rupture," including her time with very little language in her brain, her relationships with the people in her life as she made her recovery, and her musings on language and memory as informed by both her own experiences and what she has learned since about scientific thinking on the subjects. It's all very interesting, and I particularly appreciated how careful she is to acknowledge the fallibility of her own memory while narrating events, and to stress that her experiences of aphasia aren't universal and that the sense those experiences have given her of how language works in the brain isn't definitive. I can't help contrasting that careful, humble, refreshingly open approach with the way Jill Bolte Taylor seemed to want to present her own experiences with neural damage as providing some kind of definitive mystical revelation in My Stroke of Insight, which I have to admit made me a little uncomfortable.

I will also say that Marks' writing is perfectly clear, readable, and fluent. Whether that's a testament to the progress she's made in her recovery, the strategies she uses to compensate for her difficulties, or some excellent editing, I don't know, but I'd suspect it's probably a combination of all three. ( )

"If I could write the thing, I could read it. If I could read the thing, I could often say it. The process indicated that there was much more to explore, a rapturous language life that could be sought, and more importantly, found.”

Lauren Marks suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm at the age of just 27, and her account of her recovery makes for a fascinating (if sometimes hard to read) book. What happened to her would be obviously brutal for anyone, but for an actress and writer whose life revolved around books, it must have been devastating. Her very sense of self was wrapped up in language, and the aneurysm detached her from the language and the life she knew.

What I liked best about her book is her re-creation of her recovery, bit by bit, and word by word (literally). At its best, her book is an interesting mix of her personal journey and the neurological science underlying what was happening to her. It's an offbeat and unsettling book, but it mostly works in some unexpected and interesting ways. This is obviously an intensely personal book, and that always makes for some uncomfortable reading. Fair enough. But too much of Marks's book was just a little too honest for me. There is a lot of detail on the travails of her personal life (with her dad, and especially with her boyfriend), some of which I could have done without.

As for the audiobook narration, there was something about Tavia Gilbert's voice and reading style that didn't quite work for me -- it just didn't seem a good fit for the material here. And for me, I think that added to the awkward feeling I experienced reading/hearing much of Marks's book.

The awkwardness aside, this is a raw and unflinching story that is ultimately worthwhile. Marks is nothing if not brave and resilient, and that shines through in her account. Recommended.

(Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Tantor for a complimentary audio version in exchange for an unbiased review.) ( )