The Comet's Tail
Описание книги
I do not remember the tubes, the tests, or the icy cold of space. I do not remember losing six months of my life. At age nineteen, Amy Nawrocki returned from her first year of college, scribbled a few notes in her journal, and took a terrifying summer trip. She remembers one night of disorientation, then nothing until Christmas, when awareness slowly restarts. The Comet’s Tail is the story of these missing months: the seizures and fever spikes, the deep nothing of coma, and the unexpected, dramatic recovery. Memory is recreated around EEG transcripts and doctors’ notes, family vigils and blurry Polaroids. From her unique perspective, Nawrocki investigates the connections between memory, trauma, and identity. She illuminates what it means to truly return to consciousness in this extraordinary memoir of illness, healing, and writing over the blank pages of our lives.
Отрывок из книги
“A complex and compelling memoir.” –Kirkus Reviews
“From the first sentence of her elegant and strikingly poetic memoir, Nawrocki creates a palimpsest scrapping layers to reveal glimpses of her ‘summer of no memory.’ In The Comet’s Tail, Nawrocki delves through medical records, journals, and family stories to pose the question ‘does memory protect us from trauma or does trauma erase memory?’ Hers is a singularly courageous and fascinating journey in search of the answer.”
.....
“The Comet’s Tale is the fascinating exploration of how memory, or its absence, fits between body and spirit. Amy Nawrocki takes us on a journey through piecing together the fragments that make up one period of her life and in doing so opens the door to reflection on what makes a memory, inviting us to ponder the uncertainties and questions that come together to make up a life: why we remember some things, forget others, and how our own story of memory impacts those with whom we share this life. Her story is a reminder that even when we try really hard to make sense of what happens, so much of life remains a mystery. Prepare to ride an unsettling yet beautiful current with the author, moving on a riptide of forgetting and confusion, down into the murky depths of nothingness, to suddenly emerge on the other side of awareness with a gasp, ready to fill the next blank page with whatever comes next.”
–Heidi Barr, author of Woodland Manitou: To Be on Earth
.....