Customer Reviews
fascinating and deep - By: Mrs. G. J. Fake, 19 May 2010 
this book makes you think & then think again. He was a man who loved life & himself. He was stylish , important & busy.
Then his life is gone , replaced by basically waiting to die & sometimes wishing to.
A short book -for obvious reasons, it describes one of your worst nightmares.
Read it & also i would recommend the dvd, the film is very good & is not a pale imitation of the book as sometimes happens.
A gem of a little book. - By: Mrs. SL ROBERTSON, 14 Apr 2010 As a trained nurse I have come across many strong individuals who rise above immense adversity. This book speaksin its pages, from the inner mullings of the author, who was profoundly disabled by a massive stroke, yet it is neither sentimental nor gloomy. The author manages to take us through his feelings & memories with great agility.
A friend lent me this book & I ordered it from Amazon to have as a "keeper" which is not something I often do with a book.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - By: Alan W. Barrow, 06 Feb 2010 An amazing book by a man suffering from Locked-In Syndrome. His physical world shrank when he became hospitalised & thus reliant on carers for his needs, but his imagination knew no bounds. His earlier experiences were relived, providing him with a rich source of pleasures. The book is easy to read and, with its short chapters, makes the reader want to read on to discover what Bauby has to say. There is a denouement at the end that is striking, to say the least! A book well worth reading.
After the lavish praise... a disappointment - By: Electric Otto, 18 Jan 2010 
I picked this book up as an afterthought, an addition to an order I was placing. I hadn't seen the film, but I knew it had had rave reviews, & the book equally so.
And having read it, I have to confess I'm really pretty surprised by the number of positive reviews & the level of gushing that this book has inspired. Setting aside the remarkable achievement of writing a book whilein this condition, the book itself was quite lightweight & empty.
I won't bore you too much with the story. Essentially it involves Bauby, who was the editor of Elle magazine when he fell victim to coma & total paralysis, & who could only communicate by blinking an eye, & the book he chose to write whilein hospital.
It's a very short book - some 130 pages - & for much of it Bauby muses. Except he doesn't really muse, he mostly recounts things that have happened to himin the past, or little eventsin his daily lifein the hospital. Occasionally he will tell us about dreams he's had. And attached to each of these episodes there is sometimes a thread that relates to his current predicament, although often they come down to variations on the theme of: "I used to be able to do that/go there/feel that, now I cant".
To get to the point, I really expected more. Bauby is clearly an intelligent, articulate, man. And he has an easy-to-read style - although I found it overwritten, "purple prose"in places. But from the reviews, & from the simple fact that here is a man trappedin himself for a year, I would have hoped to come away from reading the book with more insight. A better understanding of the man himself, perhaps, or of life itself! Especially from the number of reviews that stated things like "Fall backin love with life!"
But there are no great revelations. In fact there are precious few revelations at all. And few moments that inspired a great deal of thought. Most of the things Bauby remarks upon reveal little that hasn't been dug over by countless, & better , writers before. And frustratingly, there is little sense that Bauby has dug deep into himself & discovered anything new. Or if he has, he is pulling his punches & chooses not to reveal them. What little we do understand about Bauby comes, if you will, as a side effect of what he is telling us. He talks around himself, & is surprisingly coy about getting to the heart of who he is.
Most of the book is quite self-indulgent. Dream sequences, & anecdotes about the pastin which very little happens & from which Bauby does not seem to draw a great deal of insight. For instance, he goes to Lourdes & dumps a girlfriend, refusing to tell us how he feels/felt about his, but happy to tell us that she wrote over a book he was reading how much she loves him; another anecdote about when he was a hotshot young editor where he goes to the racetrack & forgets to bet his colleagues money on a horse that then goes on to win; an anecdote about an imagined trip to Hong Kong whose purpose seems only to be to tell us that there is an upscale designer restaurantin which Bauby's photograph is used as part of the design... there are just too many times where Bauby seems to be writing simply whatever comes into his head, because he can (and who can blame him!) but which simply contain little of any substance.
I'm afraid at the end of it I failed to draw any great lessons, & what's more, felt that if life held any great lessons I'm not sure that Bauby would be best placed to discover them. The sad thing about his book is that what I learned about Bauby had more to do with what he didn't say than what he did, & from what he chose to focus on against what he chose to ignore. He struck me as a self-important & vain man (which I suppose you probably have to be to become editor of Elle magazine) who, while nevertheless being trappedin a miserable condition, seems to lack any empathy or emotional engagement with the peoplein his life. And while not an unemotional person, or one without the ability to turn the odd beautiful phrase, he struck me as having made few stridesin the understanding of himself let alone the human condition.
The book feels like the words of someone who believes he Has Something To Say, & from his professional life is used to being listened to. From the writing of the book itself to the "Samizdat" dispatches he fires off to his many friends & colleagues at regular intervals, here is a man whose central problem seems to be that he is "out of the loop" at every level - physical, human & professional, & his words, his need to express himself, are part of his battle against that.
I can't help thinking of a writer like Primo Levi, who suffered a traumatic few yearsin Auschwitz, & how he wrote about his time there. His total unflinching honesty about himself, his weaknesses, his fear & failures. His refusal to engagein self-indulgent flowery writing, but sticking always to tight economic prose. How much more powerful & revealing was his writing than this. Bauby could have used some of that tautness here, & a lot more honesty. There's something too self-conscious about his writing.
A great disappointment then. But a brief one at least.
Poignant, moving, haunting and humbling - By: Little Miss Average, 08 Jan 2010 This short but beautiful novel deserves 5 stars. The author wrote it whilst suffering lockedin syndrome & blinking to an assistant to signal which letter he wanted. Sadly he died shortly after its completion. The painstaking wayin which every word & sentence must have been chosen by the author makes this even more special, as everything he says conveys something to the reader, there is no padding here.
This book brought outin me many intense emotions, but it manages not to be self pitying or depressing,in large part due to the black humour that's laced throughout. Its power isin how deeply affecting it is, I know of no one who hasn't taken this book into their heart, & rightly so.
This book haunts mein the best possible way. I re-read this when I'm feeling down about life as it never fails to change my perspective.
I recommend this to everyone & anyone unreservedly.
