Weights and Wings! (The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby)

Member Name: soulcurls

Product:	The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby
Date:	11/03/01 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: extremely moving.

Disadvantages: Disturbing, and unsettling.

On first picking up 'The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly'it will strike you that it is a very small book, a slim volume of only 139 pages, but on reading this story and with the realisation of how it was written, it transforms before your eyes in to a giant piece of work, a story so mamoth in its telling that I defy anyone not to be impressed.

When I reached page 139, I did something that I have never done before. I took a deep breath and turned to the first page of the story and started again.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, was editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young children, he had a successful career and a life many of us would envy.

After suffering a massive stroke, Bauby found himself completely paralysed, speachless and able to move only one eyelid.

He was the victim of what has become known as locked-in syndrome, a condision that follows a massive stroke and leaves the sufferer completely unable to move or communicate, but mentally undamaged, a perfect mind in a useless body.

Bauby however could move one eyelid and it was with his eyelid that he 'dictated' his story.

This is a unique glimps into a world that is fortunately rare.

A story that if nothing else will make you proud to be a human being, and possibly a little more grateful for what you have.

Summary: