A review by knitter22
Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon by Henry Marsh

3.0

While I enjoyed Marsh's previous memoir, Do No Harm, this one is quite a bit different. I loved Marsh's honesty and the beautiful way he wrote about the brain in Do No Harm, but in Admissions there are fewer patients and less poetry in his prose. It is a perfectly titled book as Marsh admits his anxiousness to retire, worries about whether the drugs in his suicide kit will be outdated, overwhelming desires to renovate a derelict cottage, the sad state of healthcare in Nepal and the Ukraine, and many of his own doubts and regrets. This is all written in a choppy and difficult-to-read style that jumps from his admittance to a psychiatric hospital to tweaking the nose of a male nurse in fury to the daffodils he planted when an affair ended. Marsh's honesty and questioning is writ large in Admissions, but it often comes across as sad and weary despair.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the book.