A Memoir of Life in Death

by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Translated from the French by Jeremy Leggatt

****½ (4.5/5)

Memoir / Non-Fiction / Inspirational

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Book Synopsis:

At the age of 43,  Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief for French Elle, survived a massive stroke which resulted in locked-in syndrome.  Paralysed from head to toe, but with his mind still as alert as ever, Bauby wrote this book with the help of Claude Mendibil. Mendibil would recite the alphabet to him and when she arrived at the letter he wanted, Bauby would blink. Blinking his left eyelid was Bauby’s only means of communication with the outside world. This book was literally crafted letter by letter.

In a place of enforced stillness, Bauby manages to truly take a step back and observe his world. From the depth of his diving bell, he still manages to travel with the wings of a butterfly.

Jean-Dominique Bauby died just two days after the French publication of his book.

Book Review:

First off, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly gave me a healthy dose of perspective. It reminded me of how easily we can give up when things don’t go our way. You could say that Bauby had lost everything. Unable to move, let alone speak, communicating via a slow and tiresome method of reciting the alphabet and blinking at the desired letter, it would be so easy to be overtaken by helplessness. But Bauby reached through the physical and mental barriers and with the help of a friend, created a unique and powerful piece of writing, that has the ability to speak to all of us.

Much of the memoir is about his day to day struggles – from boredom, to the inability to communicate a simple request to a nurse, frustration, to the sounds that agitate him. However, Bauby’s situation of being “paralyzed, mute, half-deaf and deprived of all pleasures” is juxtaposed with the power of his imagination which would transport him from his hospital bed, to anywhere he desired. “There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego, or for King Midas’s court….discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions.”

My friend who recommended this book to me described it as ‘the essence of life’. Yes, Bauby’s situation was wretched, and I’m positive that given a choice, he would have done almost anything to avoid the stroke that paralysed him. But this is a fantsatic example of making the best of your situation. Bauby drew on his strength as a writer and created for himself a legacy. From a point of personal observation and personal stories, Bauby cleanly lays out his thoughts in this short and simple book. As a reader, we have the opportunity to see into the mind and experiences of a man with locked-in syndrome, but more importantly, we can take away with us Bauby’s perspective of the duality of life -  you can be trapped in a diving bell, but from within that, you also have the ability to take flight like a butterfly.

x Julie

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P.S. I recommend watching this TED Talk by Dr. Brené Brown, a researcher professor who has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness. It kind of relates to this book in a vague way, but even if it doesn’t relate at all, it’s a good talk to watch as it that makes some very interesting observations.

P.P.S. I love TED Talks. If you don’t know what they are, go to TED.com

by Cally Taylor

***~~ (3/5)

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Book Synopsis:

Lucy Brown is about to marry a wonderful man. Dan is handsome, caring and funny. Lucy has never been happier, she is about to get everything she has ever wanted.

But, on the eve of her wedding, Lucy dies in an accident.

Lucy has a choice to make: she can go to heaven and be separated from her soul mate, or she could be with Dan forever…as a ghost.

Lucy will not leave Dan, and she makes her choice. But things are not quite so easy for Lucy. She has a task to complete before she can become a ghost. First, she has to find true love for a total stranger.

My Book Review:

I was really excited about reading this book after seeing that it received 10/10 reviews on chick lit websites, beating Bridget Jones’s 9/10. (I love Bridget!) However, although I enjoyed Heaven Can Wait, I didn’t love it like others did. To me, Briget Jones still leads the pack by miles.

I enjoyed the fantasy of the story: Cally Taylor’s vision of heaven, limbo, tasks and ghosts. I particularly liked Lucy’s housemates from ‘The House of Wannabe Ghosts’. Brian, the endearing smelly train-lover and Claire the petulant young goth.

You know when you read a synopsis or watch a movie trailer and it basically tells you the whole story? I wish I hadn’t read so much about this book before I actually read it. I removed the last sentence from the synopsis above, so that there will be a bit more surprise in the story for you. I think my biggest issue with this book is that that last quarter of the story is rather predictable. Its a case of the reader being a step ahead of the character.

I’m still waiting for another book to overtake my esteem for Bridget Jones but until then, if you enjoy this genre or need a fun, perk-me-up read, definitely give Heaven Can Wait a chance.

x Julie

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p.s. I know I’m constantly raving about it, but if you haven’t read Briget Jones’s Diary, you’re missing out. She’s a menace to herself but she’s lovely.

Click here to read my review of Bridget Jones’s Diary.

by Alice Sebold

***½~ (3.5/5)

Fiction

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Book Synopsis:

Pennsylvania, 1973, fourteen year old Susie Salmon is brutally raped then killed. Susie tells her story as she watches her family from heaven. Susie’s killer was her neighbor, and still lives next door. Susie’s family is desperately trying to cope with their loss. But with no body found and her killer still on the loose, they cannot rest. They become isolated from each other, each member dealing with their grief in their own way.

As the years pass, Susie’s siblings and friends grow up, fall in love and experience things that Susie never got to experience herself. However, Susie is not quite finished with life yet…

My Book Review:

It’s taken me a while to add another book review because I started and gave up on 3 different books. I lost interest in 2 of them halfway through – which is extremely frustrating, having devoted so much time to reading them, then getting bored. The Lovely Bones was what I needed to get me back on track: being absorbed in a good story.

I loved the progression of this novel. It began with this creepy and disturbing event that made tingle and slightly freaked out. Then it became a story of observation and longing, about understandable human reactions. Susie’s family’s grief and search for her killer come to the fore. But then the story becomes about their lives in the years after her murder, seen through Susie’s eyes up in heaven as she follows them, she herself unable to let go of the people she loved and the woman she would never grow up to be.

This is not a typical, predictable story. I say this not to make you think that there will be major unexpected twists but to try and describe the subtlety and flow that Sebold infuses into the direction of her novel. It’s not a typical thriller about catching the killer. We definitely want to catch Susie’s killer – but do we always get what we want?

Thinking back on the feeling I got from this story, what I experienced was a fully formed impression of this family. Despite the loss and grief, we see healing and joy. I grew to appreciate the characters of the feisty alcoholic grandmother, the sensitive son and a mother who just cant seem to be.

It was only towards the very end that I lost my grasp on my suspension of disbelief for a while. And only for a while – until I accepted it and allowed myself as a reader to follow the path that was set (I am being cryptic so as not to spoil the story for you).

What is really interesting about this book is its take on ‘heaven’. Sebold’s heaven in this novel is different for everyone in it. Each person creates their own heaven. Susie was fourteen when she died, so her heaven included school buildings, a gazebo and playful dogs. But she was still lonely, inextricably connected to her life on earth, constantly watching. Susie would only be able to enter a freer, wider heaven when she let go of her own past and allowed her family to let go of her.

It’s strange that this novel is written from the perspective of a dead girl because the next novel which I am about to read is also from this perspective: Heaven Can Wait by Cally Tayor. It came highly recommended by chick lit clubs (10/10!), so I’m looking forward to reading it!

x Julie

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by Joan Didion

****~ (4/5)

Non-Fiction / Autobiography / Memoir

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Book Synopsis:

In a second, Joan Didion’s life was thrown into turmoil when her husband John Gregory Dunne unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack in 2003. Not only was her husband of 40 years gone, but two days before his death, their daughter Quintana had been hospitalized after falling seriously ill. Life as Joan knew it had ended.

Joan’s grief leads her to a state of ‘magical thinking’, and Joan lucidly writes of her experience of that time in her life. A time when although she knew intellectually that John was dead, she found herself keeping John’s shoes for him. For when he returned.

This is a unique and honest revelation of Joan’s personal experience of grief. Of a time spent wishing. Her year of magical thinking.

My Book Review:

“Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

In a heartbeat.

Or the absence of one.”

I have been fortunate that I have not lost someone close to me. Not yet. But the inevitability of death is ever present.

In this book, Joan reveals her experience of grief in the year following her husband John’s death. She reveals how her state of mind changed and flowed over the next few months, her inner turmoil, the strange ideas and convictions that gripped her and the overwhelming loss that she felt.

“Grief, when it comes, is nothing what we expect it to be.”

Joan uses the comparison of the death of her parents to her experience to the death of John. Her parents were 85 and 91 when they died, and she felt sadness, loneliness and regret, but she “would still get up the morning and send out the laundry.”

But “Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

Joan talks about “the vortex effect” – of how one trigger of thought, like passing by a restaurant, would remind her of a time they ate there, which would remind her of another experience, which would take her to a different event years ago, eventually sucking her deep into the past. Into memories of John. She began avoiding any venue that she might associate with him to avoid the vortex.

This is strangely not a depressing book. It is of course about an extremely sad, lost and depressed woman, but Joan Didion writes her murky state of mind with such clarity. Moreover, the state of grieving is not something I have had to experience, nor would choose to, but someday I might have no choice but to experience it. I feel that I want to know something about grief, especially because in our society, displays of grief are frowned upon, and therefore our understanding of it is so limited.

“Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation…A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty…But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.”

Joan Didion offers a peephole into this foreign world.

This book is sensitive, grounded in the real life experience of a woman grieving. Through raw eyes, looking in dismay at her new life, to which she is now bound, the reader can, if only vicariously, come to glimpse the experience of loss.

x Julie

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