![]() ![]() Her medical records - from a month-long hospital stay - showed an almost immediate onset of psychosis, violence, and dangerous instability. It’s as if Brain On Fire is trying to be two conflicting books at once: a reporter’s investigation and a chilling personal account.Ĭahalan offers a journalist’s description of the baffling illness confronting her: “One day, I woke up in a strange hospital room, strapped to my bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak,” she recounts. ![]() What’s often missing is the “breathtaking” human and more personal side of the story. Cahalan’s publisher promises “sharp reporting … in a swift and breathtaking narrative” of a personal nature. I suspect New York Post reporter Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain On Fire: My Month Of Madness, does a good job of keeping that important distance while working her beats on a big metropolitan newspaper.īut what works in newsprint is less effective in a book focusing on an individual living through a terrifying and mysterious ordeal. Reporters are taught to be objective and keep themselves out of the story, whether it’s by a cultured journalism professor or a grizzled city desk editor. ![]()
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