Here comes the sentence I always start a book post with: Finally a book post again! This time I would like to recommend you a book that was a freaking long time on my to-read list: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Last summer I found a copy of it at a book stall with used books (and everyone who knows me is right when he/she thinks that it was not the only book that found its way from the stall into my flat to make the piles of unread books on my living room floor even higher). Nevertheless, there were a lot of other books I wanted to read as well. So I decided to read this little memoir parallel to the other ones, which – thanks to its short chapters that all are single anectodes – worked out perfectly well. That’s what the book is about:
In 1995, 44-year-old Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle and the father of two young children. Then he had a stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke with the locked-in syndrome: Only his left eye functioned. Using it he was able to dictate words by blinking while the alphabet was recited to him slowly to select the letters he meant. While laying in the hospital he used this technique to write his book – a memoir about his past, his family, his condition and the everyday life in the hospital.
I expected the book to be dramatic and sad. It is dramatic and sometimes very sad, indeed. But it is also full of humour, of self-acceptance and reflection of the past. I great read!
I wish you a wonderful weekend, filled with many lazy hours to read your piles of books!
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