Hello all bookish people! As you can see from the title, this review
will be an odd sort of a mashup. Mainly because, and I’ll be honest here, I
personally find it impossible to properly review short story collections and/or
memoirs. Especially since this memoir in question spanned a couple years of a
person’s life during her illness. So, without further ado, here are two
completely and utterly unrelated books in one review. I just really wanted to
talk about both. I mean, they both have yellow on the cover so they are
basically the same?
The first book I want to talk about is Summer Days and Summer Nights edited by Stephanie Perkins. This is
the second short story collection (want to start a counter on how many times I
say these words) that she curated. The first was My True Love Gave to Me which featured 12 holiday stories by
different authors. This collection (count: 3), however, consists of 12 summer
romances. It seems twee, but really, it’s a great idea and way to showcase the
talents of several authors. Some are well-known (Leigh Bardugo, Veronica Roth),
others less so (at least for me). Of course, as is with collections of any
sort, there are always going to be hits and misses. I’m glad to say none of
them were complete busts for me, but there were a couple that engaged me less.
However, I do want to mention a couple standouts. Firstly an LGBTQ story by
Nina LaCour. Now this was a sweet, sweet story, and one that stuck with me the
most. It deftly dealt with the discovery of mutual attraction without
“othering” same sex couples. As well is should be. There was also some stories
with fantasy elements (the Leigh Bardugo one), and some that felt like comedies
of manners in the current age (the oddball story by Jon Skovron).
What I enjoyed most about the short story collection (count: surely, 25
by now) was how so many of the stories were utterly unexpected. One sees the
cover design (baby blue with bright yellow pages) and expects light-hearted and
fluffy fun, but it was so much more than that. There were heartbreaks and the
woes of first loves. Sure, there were also a few “happily ever afters”, but the
majority focused on the amount of actual work that can go into falling and
staying in love. All that with fantasy and sci-fi twists, as an added bonus.
Four stars for me (rounded up from the calculated average of 3,5). I’d
recommend it.
**
The second book I want to talk about in Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. Ms.
Cahalan is a newspaper reporter who suddenly and quite inexplicably starts
suffering from epileptic attacks. She is sent to NYU’s Epilepsy ward, where her
symptoms worsen daily and she becomes almost catatonic and a mere husk of her
former self. Susannah Cahalan has constructed the events leading up to, during,
and after that month of madness, and the memoir is correspondingly divided into
three main parts. The second one – her stay in the hospital – is later
carefully constructed from her family members’ accounts and camera footage,
because she still has little to no recollection of that time. Now, if you are
having flashbacks to any House MD episodes, you’d be completely right. This was
a fascinating and compulsively readable medical mystery (I feel bad for
sensationalising the author’s life story), and I quite literally could not put
the book down.
I don’t want to say too much about her eventual disease because I think
not knowing adds to the suspense, but it’s not a real spoiler to tell you that
obviously it is a rare disease – a real “zebra” in doctors’ parlance – so the
memoir doubles as a public health service announcement.
The writing style was clear. Even the science-y aspects were
understandable and did not bog the narrative down. My one small quip would be
that I personally would have loved to have a clear illustration of all the
different parts of the human brain. She refers to them quite often and
describes the location of all the lobes and areas, but I feel an actual picture
would have been even better, most of all because she did include other random
illustrations/copies of her medical charts/journals. All in all, this was a strong
four stars. I did find the latter part slightly less engaging than the first
two, but I guess it’s symbolic, in a way, as it chronicles the time spent
finding her way back to herself. I personally would’ve loved to read more about
what doctors and people themselves can do to ensure better cooperation between
different specialists, but she touched upon this subject only briefly.
I’d recommend this to newbies and lovers of non-fiction alike. It’s
important to spread awareness for this extremely rare disease that has probably
gone undiagnosed in so many people, mainly because of how the symptoms can be
misleading, and the condition can be misdiagnosed as mental illness. Quick
note! It is also being made into a film, due to be released possibly this year.
I love finding out such things after I’ve read the book.
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