Rating: 
Summary: Bauby has written a couragous memoir.
Review: If you liked this book an even better one is Under the eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan. It is the story of a neurologically handicapped boy who turns to writing once he is given the correct medication, to allow himself to touch the keys of a typewriter with a stick.
The difference for me in the two memoirs is that Bauby was a good wrtiter but Nolan is a gifted writer. Nolan was able to keep inside himself, prior to his release post medication, an enormous wealth of lyrical prose. Nolan is Irish and the text is truely musical in quality. The boy's upbringing is remarkable and his family is likewise admirable and courageous. Nolan's book is one of the best books I have ever read. The musical quality of the text is similar to Cry the Beloved Country by Patton. Other books that deal with neurologically impaired but gifted people are An Anthropologist on Mars and The Man who MIstook his Hat for his wife, by OLiver Sachs.
Rating: 
Summary: What a book.......
Review: I read a short article on Jean-Dominique Bauby a couple of months ago, on how a stroke had changed his life so devastatingly that he could only communicate by blinking his left eye. I tried to imagine what this would be like, but until I read his heart-rendering story I couldnt contemplate the nightmare in which he was living. The book, although very short, held me in its grasp, I cried when I read the passage where he talked about playing hangman with his son, and how angry and sad he was that his condition had taken away his right to touch his own sons face. I laughed when he described his day trip out to the beach, just so he could smell the french fries, but mostly I stood back and admired this man who's body had been so cruely ravaged by a stroke, but who's mind remained alert. This book serves as a testament that we should live life a day at a time, because you never know what is around the corner. Teresa Mitchell (teresa.mitchell@britcoun.org
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Summary: Beauty, love and the essence of life through tragedy.
Review:
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
By Jean-Dominique Bauby
The stroke that put Elle magazine's editor-in-chief, Jean-Dominique Bauby, into a coma was a brutal twist of fate. Three weeks later he re-surfaced in a hospital bed in northern France locked within a body rendered immobile, save for the left eyelid. But despite the horror of his condition, he was determined to communicate his story and to dispel the irritating rumours circulating Paris that he had become a "vegetable". He set about "dictating" tracts of text pre-written in his head by blinking through each letter of the alphabet. Three arduous months later, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly was complete.
The book is a stunningly lucid collection of reminiscences, yearnings and descriptions made all the more moving by the knowledge that, a matter of days after it was published, Bauby died.
Although he lived his last year in a phantom-like state, a fly on the wall of his own shattered life, he did not descend into maudlin self-pity. Far from it. During his ordeal, he could not even reach out and touch his children or engage friends in conversation ("...my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home.") but his writings are more illuminating than depressing, more analytical than self serving.
With almost unearthly clarity he captures, as concisely as anyone before him, the true essence of life. The irrevocable confines of his near-useless body induce in him a heightened awareness of what it means to love, a tormented longing to perform the most simple physical acts and a continuous series of sanity-preserving flights of fancy.
"I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory."
Despite the tragedy of his story, Bauby has left something beautiful behind. We all have something to learn.
Rating:
Summary: Emotionally draining and heartwarming
Review: I could not put the book down. I ready it in one hour. If more people could take one hour out of their lives to read this, maybe we would have more compassionate humans in the worl
Rating:
Summary: A lyrical masterpiece...
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly must be read aloud to be fully appreciated. But, beware... you will lose your voice in certain passages. Every emotion known to the human heart lies within these pages. Seldom do we find prose so poetic. Bauby's affliction ("locked-in syndrome" brought on by a brain-stem stroke) necessitated the transmission of all he could muster in his unaffected mind by the blink of an eye. Using a special version of the alphabet coded into eye-blinks, Bauby dictated his carefully crafted and memorized words, sentences, and paragraphs to a dedicated and loving assistant. The result is a tour-de-force that - affliction and impediments notwithstanding - stands a monument to the human song. Only the heartless will be able to read this brief memoir in any but short takes
Rating:
Summary: A lyrical masterpiece...
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly must be read aloud to be fully appreciated. But, beware... you will lose your voice in certain passages. Every emotion know to the human heart lies within these pages. Seldom do we find prose so poetic. Bauby's affliction ("locked-in syndrome" brought on by a brain-stem stroke) necessitated the transmission of all he could muster in his unaffected mind by the blink of an eye. Using a special version of the alphabet coded into eye-blinks, Bauby dictated his carefully crafted and memorized words, sentences, and paragraphs to a dedicated and loving assistant. The result is a tour-de-force that - affliction and impediments notwithstanding - stands a monument to the human song. Only the heartless will be able to read this brief memoir in any but short takes
Rating:
Summary: Amazing and profound
Review: This book is nothing short of amazing. The way it was written and dictated, his touching observations on his condition and surroundings, and the charming style in which he wrote are all incomparable. I'll save this book and read it again often
Rating:
Summary: A perfect little book, worth every penny -- and I'm tight!
Review: From within what must be one of the deepest lonelinesses of all, Bauby has written an exquisite and heartbreaking testament about what it means to be human. The book itself, as well as its matter, is both heroic and discomfiting -- and it's written with a grace and an understanding that will make you change your life
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful example for the human love for life.
Review: This is a book about the essential, perceived in a world of silence and motion-less. A book about ourselves and the ultimate values. A book about love and life when they became memories
Rating:
Summary: A captivating testament to a spirit that could not be broken
Review: At the age of 43, Jean-Dominique Bauby (former editor-in-chief of the French magazine "Elle") suffered a massive stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed. His mind, however, remained intact. A victim of "locked-in syndrome," the only part of his body that he could still move was his left eyelid. Unable to communicate in any other way, he and his therapists devised a system whereby Bauby could blink out what he wanted to say, letter by letter. In this way, he managed to compose his memoir, with his speech therapist carefully transcribing Bauby's coded blinks. The book was published just two days before Bauby's death in 1996. I became aware of this book when I learned that Johnny Depp will star in a movie of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" in 2006 (playing Bauby himself). Intrigued, I decided to read up beforehand. What I discovered was a poignant and inspirational expression of a man with an incredibly strong spirit. Though he expresses frustration and sadness at his condition, Bauby does not wallow in the trap of self-pity. His observations of the world are sharpened and given new perspective as he is forced to deal with paralysis. Bauby is even able to look at elements of his predicament with a wry sense of humor, as in the time a nurse woke him up to ask if he wanted a sleeping pill. The book is not written as a linear story - in fact, we don't read about the day of Bauby's stroke until near the end - but rather it is a collection of vignettes. In some he offers insights and observations of his daily life in the hospital. In others he reflects on various memories, with both fondness and, at times, regret for missed opportunities. And in still other chapters he shares with us the dreams he has had since his stroke. He also reflects on his last day as a normally functioning person, and on some of the plans he had in his life before - plans that he never got to fulfill. Bauby has dedicated the book to his children, and it is clear that he misses being a regular father. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is a very easy read, and well worth the time. It is only 132 pages in length, but I can't help imagining just how tedious it must have been for Bauby to blink out even one page, let alone over one hundred. That, and the amazingly beautiful, fluent language in which the book is written has given me an overwhelming respect for this remarkable man. We have here a window into a soul that refused to die, even while trapped within a body that could no longer move. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone, as it sparks in the reader a more complete awareness of the world and a fuller appreciation for the little things in life.
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