It was researched, yet speculative at the same time and she blended it well. There’s no better example of blending memoir and autobiography that I can think of. Writer’s Takeaway: Cahalan used a first person narration voice to cover a point of her life from which she has little memory. I liked that even when things looked terrible, they stuck with her and wouldn’t leave her side or give up hope that things could return to normal. I wish she’d worked them more into her narrative as they stood apart a lot.Ĭahalan’s family was so dedicated to her health and I found that really inspiring. They felt a little too much like ‘Paranormal Activity’ to me and took me out of the story.
They were scenes of her waking in the middle of the night and having paranoid delusions of which she has no memory. I didn’t like the parts where Cahalan narrated scenes that had been recorded during her illness. I thought this was well researched and presented in a way that didn’t feel like a dry research paper. It was interesting to see how the disease takes different forms and affects different individuals in different ways. She took case studies and notes from her doctor to paint a picture of others suffering from the disease, not just herself. I enjoyed how Cahalan described her disease at the end of the book. I could see him in them and the desperate hope they clung to. My mom went through a really terrible accident when I was young and my dad, much like the Cahalans, was at the hospital day and night, waiting for any news: good or bad. Susannah’s parents reminded me of my dad. I think that’s a trait all women look for in a man.
#Brain on fire novel full
It would have been a quick and dirty way into a family, but he didn’t shy away and embraced it with full strength. He was given an easy way to duck out when things got hard but instead he stuck with Susannah and her family. Knowing that a disease mysteriously contacted can do that to a person is alarming.Ĭahalan’s boyfriend, Stephen, was my favorite character. The way she behaved changed so drastically from beginning to middle to end that it was almost a study in inconsistent characters. It was so strange to hear about Cahalan’s behavior during her illness.
She doesn’t have memory of so much of her time that a lot of her story is drawn from what her family and the doctors remember. With each diagnosis, guess, and clue, she’s included the medical terminology and explanations she’s gained since regaining herself. She make it a mystery for the reader as well, giving them only as much as she and her family had each step of the way. I liked the way Cahalan structured this book. Having contracted a rare auto-immune disease that distorted her brain function, Cahalan’s journey is long and scary the reader knowing it could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. What happened? Cahalan takes the reader on her journey the way her family experienced it one day at a time and one clue at a time. Susannah Cahalan was a successful New York reporter one day, and the next she was confused, having seizures, and paranoid.
Brain in Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
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