A review by em_doz
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

3.0

While I was absolutely amazed at the authors resilience and courage to understand exactly what she had gone through where as others would have been all too grateful to forget - I found the writing style to be more consistent with that of a medical journal rather than a memoir. I did not find it difficult to follow because I am well versed in medical jargon, but for others the writing may be a bit dry and dull. She did a good job of explaining each term simply enough, but because of that there were pages of explanation into medical terms that caused me to start losing interest. That being said, she is a journalist so this is hardly surprising. I feel her book would have appealed to a much wider audience had she written in a manor that were easier to relate to, but I digress.

Other than the writing - I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I loved that she didn't reveal her diagnosis at the beginning. I've read way too many memoirs that start out with "my name is ______ and I survived ______." Without knowing exactly what she is fighting the reader experiences some (but most definitely not all) of the fear and uncertainty that her family must have experienced.

Her story is truly amazing and awe-inspiring. It is definitely worth the read if you are looking for something informative and straightforward. It opened my eyes to diseases that I had previously been completely unaware of.