The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

 I have just realised that I have just read two books about French men on the trot.  This has been on my bookshelf for years and I've never read it and I fancied a short read. (One of my friends became inspired after reading it to become a speech therapist.)

Well what can I say really, I can't be negative about a book written by a guy with locked in syndrome. A man who dictated this book letter by letter to his speech therapist via the blinking of his one eye. This being the only part of his body which still moved after his stroke. What dedication and commitment by the pair of them to write this.
Of course it is a short book and a totally unsentimental account of how Jean feels in his cocooned  prison.  He has no ability to communicate but feels everything.  All he can do is blink and look out of his one, functioning eye. To see how people in the care system treat him is heartbreaking.  When he wakes up to see a doctor sewing his left, unworking eye up it's awful. Not once did this doctor interact or communicate with him about what he was doing and his total, abject fear that this Stasi like doctor might routinely continue on and then sew up his other eye, the only opening left to him on the world around, was absolutely terrifying. Just thinking about this part of the book makes my heart race.

This book makes you feel incredibly grateful for all the little things and also how resilient people are but the dream  like sequences make it a bit of a dislocated read.  I suppose this is what Jean Bauby wanted us to feel, as close to the truth of what it is like to be completely locked in and unable to do anything apart from swivel your head and look through one eye. It is also a lesson in humility. This guy was the editor of Elle magazine one minute and 'locked in' the next. I loved how unsentimental he was and also so observant. I loved the way he described how different friends tried to communicate with him via his alphabet board , it being the ones who liked scrabble who fared the best. Jean Bauby died in 1997, one year after finishing this. What a testament to leave behind.