woblog

During a recent visit to one of the publishing conglomerates of Oxford I found myself slowly losing the will to live. Having failed to decide on a genre before entering the store, I swung, unenthused, from psychological thrillers to post war recounts. After a while I found myself heading not in the direction of my interest but the direction of the exit.

In doing so ‘Ceci est ma femme’ caught my eye. They say never to judge a book by its cover but I think it’s a good place as any to start. The simple design, a drawing of a bowler hat appearing to float against a mustard coloured background, had a quirkiness about it that for me lacked pretension. The title, of which there were two ‘Ceci est ma femme’ appearing to be in reference to the hat and ‘The Man who mistook his Wife for a hat’.

It turned out to be the most exceptional first page read of my 20-minute endurance of this paper walled enclosure. Three months later, whilst relaxing in the bath I started to read the second page and kept turning until I’d consumed an entire chapter, but this wasn’t your average page turner.

The book, so far, is extraordinary. It contains a collection of stories of patients lost in a peculiar, inescapable world of neurological disorders which currently, appear to focus on those affected by damage to the right hemisphere of the brain. Oliver Sacks, also the author of Awakenings, enlightens us to the fact that presently there is a far wider understanding and a broader investigation of the left hemisphere of the brain, often seen as more sophisticated, than the right hemisphere (’the minor part’) controlling our recognition of reality (hardly minor by my standards). And that thus far, this part of the brain and its syndromes are, remarkably, not so well recorded and therefore not so understood.

Sadly, it is apparent that those suffering certain right hemisphere syndromes find it impossible to comprehend their own predicament. And this is obvious in the case of the man who Oliver Sacks first recounts. An ostensibly cheerful character who is without a doubt an accomplished and intellectual man, he discounts his mistaking fire hydrants for young children and his shoe for a foot and his foot for a shoe as laughable mistakes. He remarks to his physician that it could be a problem with his eyes, as his friends have suggested, rather than the possibility that ‘something’s not right’. Upon leaving his examination, and his baffled physician, he tries to lift his wife’s head off, mistaking it for a hat.

I wont say much more because my ignorance wont do it justice but as one reviewer wrote ‘it offers a brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness’ the fragility of which I think can often be taken for granted. I would definitely recommend this book, if it is a book!?