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Summary: The best autobiography I've read in years
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a bittersweet account of the life of the body and the life of the mind after a devastating brain injury. It is the best autobiography I've read in years. It lifts the reader's spirit and makes one confront the fragility of life. The writing is fluid and beautiful, reads like poetry.
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Summary: a short, unsentimental, very moving account of a catastrophe
Review: profoundly moving, brief and unsentimental, the author, a 40 year old Parisian magazine editor deals with life after a massive stroke, able to communicate only by blinking his eye at an alphabet. This is a terrific, horrifying glimpse at "locked-in syndrome".
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Summary: Elegant prose
Review: Bauby takes us into his world of the human spirit and elevates us all in so doing.
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Summary: "I read the news today, oh boy..."
Review: An unquestionably fine book. 'The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly' is a concise and joyous refutation of the 'life as a well of tears' school of thought. Unlike many of doyens of Self Help literature - a body of writing to which this book thankfully could never belong - Bauby has the only qualification that truly matters: a true and unfettered love of life. Bravo!
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Summary: What a wonderful world ...
Review: The author reveal the value of life that we've forgot for a long time. It's a books that taught we to appreciate what we got in our own hand.
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Summary: Impressive book but wish it would have had more pictures.
Review: When I think I have it bad, life gives me a book like this to read and it puts things into perspective.
This is a thought provoking study into a life we can hardly visualize. The pictures of the author in the magazine article were so stark in contrast of his before and after life that I feel they should have been added to the book giving us clearer visualization of his struggle both inside and out.
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Summary: The audio version is outstanding!
Review: Rene Auberjonois reads the text with impleccable pronunciation and exquisite pacing, bringing both the essays and the author alive. The tapes transformed my usually tedious commute into a too-brief visit with a remarkable man
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Summary: a poignant narration on the human condition
Review: I am a victim of a severe traumatic brain injury and a series of strokes. I identified with Bauby. I did not have a brain stem stroke like he had, but, I have a lot of the same symptoms because of the numerous brain lesions I do have. I thought his accounts of pain and his feelings of great loss were eloquently expressed. I became choked up several times, but I know that is not what he would have wanted. I never once felt sympathy for him, I only felt glad I was able to share some small space of humanity with him for a few moments. I still read pages of the book every day
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Summary: Deeply moving. If only....
Review: As a physician and book lover I was moved by Bauby's plight and how he arduously achieved some measure of liberation.
Sadder still that devices to aid locked-in patients have been around for quite a while. If someone
had only known to equip him with an eye-operated computer ! If he lived, he might conceivably have joined us on the internet.
Lack of assistive devices do not diminish his achievement. It becomes even more awe inspiring without them
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Summary: A profound, moving and valuable book
Review: In a period when we are deluged with books about the many things we do wrong or insufficiently in our lives, here is a book that, refreshingly, makes us appreciate that we have lived at all. I found myself so amazed throughout this book at Bauby's courage, compassion, wit, poetic prose and lack of self-pity that I'm sorry I never knew more about this Paris editor before this account. This is a book to keep around to read, and reread, whenever you're feeling that life has dealt you and unfair blow
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