My sister, is my book group, recommending/demanding i read books she herself loves... i'd be lying if there wasn't a bit of a back log. The latest edition was 'the diving bell & the butterfly', which i read on the train into London last week.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby. A short story that describes what his life is like after suffering a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and eyes.
The entire book was written with Bauby blinking his left eyelid, which took ten months (four hours a day) using partner assisted scanning - (a transcriber repeatedly recited a French language frequency ordered alphabet (E-S-A-R-I-N-T-U-L etc....), Bauby blinked to choose the next letter. 200,000 blinks later the book was written, a word took on average 2 minutes to blink/write.
Bauby documents in detail his day-to-day struggles and frustrations, unable to show the slightest bit of emotion, buried alive in his own body - then into his imagination/ & memory, effortlessly flowing through his mind.
A must read.
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