Review: BRAIN ON FIRE by Susannah Cahalan

An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.

My rating: 5 stars

Brain on Fire tells the story of Post journalist Susannah Cahalan, a seemingly healthy twenty-four-year-old as she is struck down with a variety of strange symptoms--seizures, obsession with bedbugs, flu, and hallucinations to name a few--and follows her frightening battle to get diagnosed.

I picked up this book shortly after I was diagnosed with a neuropsychiatric illness and had started writing my own memoir. I wanted to see how Susannah had written hers, and I'd already seen the Netflix adaptation of Brain on Fire, which I thought had been well done.

Like Susannah, I struggled to get a diagnosis and my problems were also assumed to be solely psychological at one point. I related so much to so many things she went through.

This book is wonderfully written. It's poignant and gives a thorough insight into what exactly Susannah experienced--even though a lot of it, she admits she can't remember. Instead, the passages around her month in hospital have been constructed from interviews, tape recordings, and diary entries her family made. Yet this passage is still told in first person. As such, when Susannah describes having a brain biopsy, there was something a little unnerving about hearing each step that was performed, but narrated by her, in first-person. It brought me out of the story a little.

There's a fair bit of medical terminology and medical explanations in here, and at times I found it a little dense. But it really helped to paint a good picture of this illness, and I'd highly recommend it.