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A review by sunrays118
Is It All in Your Head?: True Stories of Imaginary Illness by Suzanne O'Sullivan
3.0
I'm going to give this book 3 stars.
The writing is well done - evocative, interesting, and engaging. The author is humble, an unexpected treat considering our expectations of a doctor writing a book. The stories are fascinating and pull you in, they are relatable and personable.
In fact, I nearly gave this book 4 stars.
What lowered the rating was two-fold. First, the author drones on a bit. What can be said in one sentence is said in two pages. When one example could suffice, she instead uses nine. This was the smaller issue, however. The true problem was the actual structure of the book. The author divides the book into chapters based on one patient. She will start the chapter with a long, in depth consideration of one patience, like Alice. The reader learns quite a bit about Alice but Alice feels precisely the same as Matthew. In fact, some of the exact same phrases are used. The reader accepts this but is feel a bit put off by it. Nonetheless, Alice's story continues to the point where she is diagnosed as not having epilepsy (spoiler alert: that is the story in every single chapter). At this point, the author abruptly jumps to some medical history about Freud. The passages are a bit drier and less welcoming. After four or five pages of that, the author inevitably begins the half story of another patient that is somewhat similar to Alice in the way that everyone in the book is similar. The author goes through a very quick version of this second patient interjected with snippets of a third patient and some generalized comments on modern medicine and its failings and then poof the chapter is over. The reader never learns what happens to any of the patients other than that they don't have epilepsy.
What started out as a quick, engaging, thought provoking piece slowly became an exercise in futility. I was left frustrated by every chapter. Also, in my edition, there were two errors that were distracting.
The writing is well done - evocative, interesting, and engaging. The author is humble, an unexpected treat considering our expectations of a doctor writing a book. The stories are fascinating and pull you in, they are relatable and personable.
In fact, I nearly gave this book 4 stars.
What lowered the rating was two-fold. First, the author drones on a bit. What can be said in one sentence is said in two pages. When one example could suffice, she instead uses nine. This was the smaller issue, however. The true problem was the actual structure of the book. The author divides the book into chapters based on one patient. She will start the chapter with a long, in depth consideration of one patience, like Alice. The reader learns quite a bit about Alice but Alice feels precisely the same as Matthew. In fact, some of the exact same phrases are used. The reader accepts this but is feel a bit put off by it. Nonetheless, Alice's story continues to the point where she is diagnosed as not having epilepsy (spoiler alert: that is the story in every single chapter). At this point, the author abruptly jumps to some medical history about Freud. The passages are a bit drier and less welcoming. After four or five pages of that, the author inevitably begins the half story of another patient that is somewhat similar to Alice in the way that everyone in the book is similar. The author goes through a very quick version of this second patient interjected with snippets of a third patient and some generalized comments on modern medicine and its failings and then poof the chapter is over. The reader never learns what happens to any of the patients other than that they don't have epilepsy.
What started out as a quick, engaging, thought provoking piece slowly became an exercise in futility. I was left frustrated by every chapter. Also, in my edition, there were two errors that were distracting.