BOOKWORM
AN ASTRONOMER OF THE INWARD
Oliver Sacks, Letters, edited by Kate Edgar, Alfred A. Knopf, $50. Oliver Sacks, one of the great humanists of our age, was a British neurologist credited with many scientific breakthroughs, but perhaps best known for his work with a group of survivors of the 1920s “sleeping sickness”.
His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings, which was adapted into a movie starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Sacks described himself as a “philosophical physician” and an “astronomer of the inward” in letters to an eclectic array of family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. And he wrote countless letters, some short, but most long, and descriptive of where he was physically and emotionally at that point in time. He wrote to psychiatrist Seymour Bird in 1966 of his “inability to steer a middle course between a ‘nothing’ letter and an exorbitant one”.
Recipients included his parents, his brothers, Atul Gawande (whose book Being Mortal Sacks praised as “marvellous”), Jane Goodall, Robin Williams, Jared Diamond, W H Auden and his patients.
With Deepak Chopra, he discussed brain/mind dilemma in a latter dated August 2003, and addressed neuroscientist VS Ramachandran as Dear Rama in a letter dated June 26, 2007.
He addressed a patient as My dear old friend Seymour, in a letter dated June 11, 1973, and apologized for not including his case history in Awakenings, but would go on to remedy that in a later edition.
Kate Edgar, his editor, researcher, assistant and friend for over three decades, has put together a collection with annotations explaining the context where needed. Sacks kept most of the letters he received and preserved his own replies with carbon copies, rough or retyped drafts or, later, photocopies, she writes in the preface.
The result is an astonishing and thought-provoking account of a brilliant man’s life, and the demons he wrestled. It’s a window into the world of a man of formidable intellect beset with insecurities.
In 1974, he was writing to the poet Thom Gunn about the sweet joy of gaining recognition “after so many years of nonrecognition, rejection, getting nowhere, being nothing...”
In a letter dated August 9, 1960, he describes life on Vancouver Island to his parents and aunt:
Canada has the most stringent licensing laws in the world and the most prohibitive social ones. You cannot stand in a bar, cannot move to another table, cannot talk to a stranger. You cannot sing, play cards, or darts...Drinking is not gregarious here. It is hard and solitary... In Quebec, for example, a woman cannot vote, cannot divorce her husband, cannot have a banking account of her own, and can be arrested for wearing short sleeves or skirts in public.
In 1969, he wrote to the Medical Director, Beth Abrahm Hospital, pushing for outings for the encephalitis patients he was treating. “I consider excursions an absolute necessity for their well-being.”
To Paul Theroux in 1995 after a weekend visit:
“I enjoyed myself so much and felt privileged to enter a little into your own memory-palace (both literal and metaphorical).”
Towards the end, with cancer having metastasized, and aware of the limited time remaining, Sacks described the pleasure he derived from writing.
He would go on to connect through personal letters to almost everyone that he corresponded with or held dear until almost the very end.
In a letter dated July 30, 2015, he wrote to Atul Gawande, describing him as good, powerful, articulate, and someone who could reverse the evil trends in medicine or society.
Sacks passed away on August 30, exactly a month later.
A ROLLICKING ACCOUNT
The Pretender by Jo Harkin, Alfred A. Knopf, $30. Who was John Collan? A peasant boy or the heir to the throne of Richard III?
Based on a little-known footnote in history, the story of Edward, Earl of Warwick, who was raised in obscurity to protect him, until he was ready to be presented to the world as King Edward VI, The Pretender is a rollicking account of the life and times of a boy who could change the fate of the English monarchy.
With a little help from Joan, a girl imbued with extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies.
Joan has two paths available to her: Marry or become a nun.
Edward has two paths available to him: Become king or die in battle.
What follows is an unlikely alliance that is presented in rich detail and bawdy humour in an authentic voice that places the reader smack dab in the middle of the action.
Later, Edward tries to understand why he had said yes.
It wasn’t a yes. It was an absence of a no, was what it was. A failure to think of a good enough no in time.
Yes, then.
He prays he won’t regret it.
The language is reminiscent of a Shakespeare play complete with the double entendres. You read a line and go back and say, “Wait, what, did she really write that?!” It’s like watching a movie, only better!
TRENDING NOW
Margaret’s New Look by Katherine Ashenburg, Alfred A Knopf, $34. Margaret is the well-regarded curator of fashion at a city museum. She is also the mother of teenaged twin girls, the wife of a successful mystery writer and a daughter grieving the death of her beloved father. As she prepares to launch a career-defining exhibition on Christian Dior, she faces fierce internal politics. Then items from the Dior collection begin to disappear even as revelations about her father’s death surface, forcing her to confront her family’s long-suppressed Jewish heritage.
Katherine Ashenburg’s love for textiles and craft is evident throughout the book – in the descriptions of Dior’s legendary Pondicherry jacket. In the history of the vogue for cotton clothes in late-eighteenth-century England that Margaret is working on for her thesis. And in the history of the House of Dior during and just after the Nazi occupation of France. In the story of his sister Catherine Dior.
The history of Margaret’s family against the history of Dior and high fashion over decades makes for a fascinating read.
THREE WARS AND A BOOK
War by Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, $43. Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the behind-the-scenes stories of three wars – Ukraine, the Middle East and the polarized American electorate’s battle for the nation’s presidency. All the big names that dominate newspaper headlines today, from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to Benjamin Netenyahu, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, show up in the well-researched stories, some of them hitherto unknown to the public. But it made me wonder, why write a book when Woodward could have broken these stories in the media while the events were current? Was he saving them for a lucrative book deal? The stories now seem rather dated. Hard to believe that he, along with fellow journalist Carl Bernstein, broke the riveting stories about the Watergate scandal. Thank God he didn’t think of saving them for a book! That would have changed the course of American history!
SOFTLY SUFI
Gold: Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori, New York Review Books, $19.95. Rumi was a seeker, a sage, a poet-philosopher, an ecstatic lover. He wrote some 65,000 verses in all, and rendering their meaning, depth and poetic verve is no mean task. Helah Liza Gafori, I am sure, is up to it. But is something lost in translation, I wonder.
Treetop blossoms in laughter.
Petals rain down.
And:
There are treasures within you.
Split the melon. Hand them out.
Simple. I kind of get it. But is there more?
IMAGINE THAT
The Best Possible Experience by Nishanth Injam, Pantheon Books, $34. Stories, rich in detail, about the lives of people living in India and its American diaspora. All haunted, in every sense of the word by a loss of home.
A man vanishes in the tiny toilet on a bus – and that’s just the first story.
LIFE’S A TEACHER
When the Stars Align by Melissa De La Cruz, Mindy’s Book Studio, USD 28.99. Three girls in Hollywood who thought they’d rule the world. Who rose from teen success to in-demand idols of screaming fans and paparazzi.
But nothing lasts forever and they fall from grace. Fate reunites them ten years later for a long-awaited confrontation with the secrets, betrayals, heartbreak and family traumas of the past. Can their old, strong friendship be revived? Will it save them?
Something in Miranda shivers; an old feeing that she thought was long lost begins to come back. She smiles. “I used to think I’d hate getting older. But I’m glad we’re not kids anymore – we can be happy on our own terms. Run our own lives. Not think about what other people think.”
Mindy Kaling, who has published the book under her label, describes the book as an entertaining and poignant coming-of-age story.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
So-Hee and Lowy by Anna King, illustrated by Chirstopher Weyant, Two Lions, USD18.99. So-Hee is lonely. She is an only child of a loving and single immigrant mother. She doesn’t have too many friends.
She longs for a pet to hold and love, but she has horrible allergies. Until one day she sees a sign for a non-furry pet sale. What is So-Hee going to bring home?
Addressing that sense of feeling “different” this sweet little tale shows how friends can open up our worlds in marvelous, unexpected ways.
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadim, GP Putnam’s Sons, $24.99. Seventh grade begins. Kareem’s best friend moved away, he messed up the tryout for the football team, and because of his heritage, he was voluntold to show the new kid – a Syrian refugee with a thick accent – around school. Just when he thinks things might be improving, his mom returns to Syria to help her family but can’t make it back home.
Kareem is stuck between countries, between friends, between football, between parents and between right and wrong. This National Book Award winner is a powerful and engaging read.
TEEN REVIEW
By PARTH BHASIN
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Penguin Random House, $11.95. Crime and Punishment by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is not an easy read because of the archaic writing style of the 1800s. However, it is an extremely rewarding experience.
The book is a psychological analysis of Raskolnikov, an ex-university student.
It evaluates the impact of poverty on him and his family. Raskolnikov murders an old and corrupt pawnbroker to solve his financial problems.
The book deals with his mental state, his guilt, anguish and paranoia, and his struggles to accept his actions.
Raskolnikov is portrayed as a “tortured genius”. The vivid portrayal of St. Petersburg, a city teeming with poverty, desperation, and corruption, and the suffocating atmosphere of the novel is reflective of Raskolnikov’s mental state, and serves as a backdrop for the broader themes of human suffering and alienation.
It can be a difficult read due to its philosophical depth and psychological complexity, but patient readers gain profound insights into the human condition and psychology. Dostoevsky’s exploration of guilt and redemption is timeless, resonating with readers across generations.
• Parth Bhasinis a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.