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Biographies and Memoirs
Title: The Diving Bell & the Butterfly Author: Bauby, Jean-Dominique Rating:  Must Read!
Publisher: Knopf, 1997 Reviewed by: Jonathan Shipley |
 
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What would you do if you had a stroke? Your brain, damaged by an interruption to its blood supply. What would you do if you woke up and couldn't move? Would you write a memoir, rich with beauty, thick with poetry? That is what Jean-Dominique Bauby did. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," is Bauby's testament to life. In 1995, Bauby, a 43-yr-old editor of French "Elle," suffered a massive stroke, leaving him completely paralyzed. His only way to communicate? Blinking his left eye. This blinking leads to a story of survival, not one of despair, but of hope. With simple words he portrays elaborate landscapes of the mind and of the soul. He watches his children, remembers the last time he saw his father, imagines lying next to his love, he does these things with gripping words and vitality. The book was published two days before Bauby's death in 1996 and became a number one bestseller across Europe. His spirit will live in the hearts and minds of anyone who reads his pages. Go Back read another review, or choose a different category. | ||||