Review: My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor. PhD

At 37, Taylor was in what most consider to be the prime of her life. She had a very successful career as a brain scientist and professor at Harvard Medical School, and had many friends and close colleagues. Yet in her memoir, My Stroke of Insight, Tayler herself argues that her life really began one early morning in 1996, when she had a massive stroke due to a blood clot in her brain, and observed herself lose her speech, mobility, and various other capacities one by one, understanding as only one in her profession could exactly what was happening to her.

'Insight' is written in three sections: first, there is a background discussion of the brain and how it functions. While somewhat interesting to the neophyte, it isn't necessary to understand the rest of the novel, and I myself skimmed it, as what I was really interested in began in section two. (The author herself discusses the various sections in the prologue, and recommends starting points in the book depending on what you're looking for, which I thought was reflective of her post-stroke zen outlook. It's not often that an author gives a reader permission to skip entire sections of a book.) This next part is where Taylor details the events of the morning of her stroke, and it's fascinating. The story of how she saved herself once she understood what was happening, by using her training and determination, is compelling. She discusses her experiences in the hospital, and her perceptions and feelings regarding not only her family and friends but the hospital's staff as they worked either with her or on her, depending upon the mood in which the staffer entered the room, and how they affected her recovery process.

Also in segment two, Taylor talks about how, as her stroke was in her left brain, all sense of her own ego and personal space had vanished, along with her abilities to feel negativity, such as anger or jealousy. She realized that since she had to work to regain her abilities in her right brain, she would also do her best *not* to work on regaining her ability to feel these things, and to maintain some sense of the 'nirvana', as she calls it, that she achieved during her stroke. Section three is a discussion of how we non-stroke-victims can work to achieve the same effects.

While I was interested in Taylor's personal story, including her miraculous eight-year road to full recovery, I did find myself skimming through section three as well. It grew repetitive, and was a little too new-agey for me. I do believe that it's important to focus on the positive, but section three was very much like a self help book, and I was only so interested in that. Taylor speaks of wanting to retain her child-like joy and views, and I believe that the success she achieved in that is what made the final section what it was. Interestingly enough, her diction remains quite high, so even as her child-like qualities come across, they do so in a very adultified way. It's a little strange, actually, but not in a bad way.

Overall, I'm glad I read it. I did take away both an interesting story and some reminders on how to seek my own inner peace, and that was enough.

Rating: three out of five stars. Interesting, but somewhat repetitive and new-agey.