A review by misspalah
The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly (4th Estate Matchbook Classics) by Jean-Dominique Bauby

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

3.0

One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil before I realized it was only mine. Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralysed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures and reduced to a jellyfish existence, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping-up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke. My jovial cackling at first disconcerted Eugénie, until she herself was infected by my mirth. We laughed until we cried. The municipal band then struck up a waltz, and I was so merry that I would willingly have risen and invited Eugénie to dance had such a move been fitting. We would have whirled around miles of floor. Ever since then, whenever I go through the main hall, I detect a hint of amusement in the Empress's smile.

• The Diving-Bell and The butterfly by Jean Dominique Bauby

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The writing is impeccable especially for someone who’ve suffered locked-in syndrome that cause by a massive stroke.The author’s body was paralysed except his left eyelid. He can no longer speak, eat, walk or even move without the intensive medical assistance. Rather than using simple ABC, he has to learn new system known as ‘ESA’ to recalibrate back on how demonstrate the word that he wanted to say to ease the communication process. One cannot image how he’s coping with this predicament as one minute you are the former editor of a French Elle Magazine and the next minute, you cant even switch off the TV in your room. All the basic functions that made us human is being stripped off. This book is the final collection of his thoughts and reminiscent of his memories while trying to understand the current state that he is in, his frustrations and his helplessness as at that time the syndrome did not really have many information to begin with. The treatment and medication was limited and the research on it was underfunded. Jean Dominique Bauby died few days after the book was published due to heart failure. I would recommend this book if you can get past his pompous personality which so apparent in some chapters (despite being in that condition) as his prose is evocative and beautiful for the most part of the book.