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The Virago Store is undergoing maintenance Saturday 5th - Sunday 6th October. No orders can be processed during this time. We apologise for any inconvenience.
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Who are you when your brain is not you?'
Jane Lapotaire is one of the lucky ones. Many people do not survive, let alone live intelligently and well again once they have suffered cerebral haemorrhage. In the long haul back to life - 'nearly dying was the easy bit' - she's learned much, some of it very hard lessons. Some friendships became casualties; family relations had to be redefined; and her work as an actress took a severe battering. The stress of living is felt that much more keenly when 'sometimes I still feel as if I am walking around with my brain outside my body. A brain still all too available for smashing by noise, physical jostling, or any form of harshness'. But she has survived and now believes it herself when people say how lucky she is.
This is a very moving, darkly funny, honest book about what happens when the 'you' you've known all your life is no longer the same you.
'a sensitive rumination on the minutiae of illness and the ways in which fortitude can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.’
splendidly written memoir about dealing with the unexpected personality change the actress suffered after brain surgery'. Sunday Times
'As a work of literature, Jane Lapotaire's book is possibly the most ambitious of them all…it is a brave and bracing book and one that deserves a wide readership.’
Sunday Telegraph
'Lapotaire's frank story..filled with wry asides.’
Ireland on Sunday
‘Like Antony Sher, she is brutally honest about herself and her state of mind, and writes with such vivid immediacy that you marvel at her honesty and recall.’
Irish News
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