Patient H.M.

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets
by Luke Dittrich
Published August, 2016

I should probably start by confessing that I love brains. Not like a zombie loves brains. More like an obsessive geek who will talk about neuroscience for hours to anyone. Even if that anyone is clearly not interested in the slightest. I spent eight years at university studying psychology and neuroscience, resulting in surprisingly few qualifications but leaving me with a life-long passion for brains.
So, as a history of one of neuroscience's most famous patients, Patient H.M. was always going to be a pretty easy sell for me.

"Patient H.M." was the pseudonym used for Henry Molaison by the researchers and doctors who spent more than sixty years studying him. Affected by severe epilepsy, Henry underwent surgery in the 1950s to remove part of his brain. Following the operation, Henry was left with a complete, debilitating and global amnesia - he was completely unable to form new memories. Henry became the most-studied patient in the history of neuroscience as researchers used his amnesia to better understand the processes of memory and the brain structures involved.

Henry's case is one that many, many people will be familiar with. It's one of the first things covered in any introductory psychology class, along with a few other memorable characters like Phineas Gage (impaled his head on a massive spike and somehow survived) and Walter Freeman (developed the highly inventive and rather disturbing transorbital lobotomy, performed with an icepick).
In some ways this may be pretty familiar ground for a lot of readers, however this book is much more than just another retelling of an interesting amnesia case.

Post-accident Phineas Gage posing with the rod that used to be inside his brain.

Author Luke Dittrich is the grandson of the brilliant (but arguably misguided) neurosurgeon who operated on Henry and caused his amnesia. As such, Dittrich brings a unique perspective to his story, using the H.M. case as a starting point around which to weave an absolutely fascinating history of neuroscience (from the very first references to brain surgery in Ancient Egypt through the lobotomy-obsessed 1930s to H.M's final days in the early 2000s) and relating this back in a very personal way to events within his own family.
This makes for a very, very readable story - I found this book absolutely impossible to put down and for someone who generally avoids non-fiction, that's saying a lot. It's a fantastic blend of biography, history and science writing, all blending into a captivating and cautionary tale of misguided surgeons ruining lives in their attempts to cure psychological problems with a scalpel (or an icepick).
As Dittrich writes,"Neurosurgery, whatever the era, always requires at least two frightening qualities in its practitioners: the will to make forcible entry into another human's brain, and the hubris to believe you can fix the problems inside"

The aforementioned Dr Freeman, lobotomising some poor lady with an icepick. He is thought to have performed this surgery on more than 3,000 patients. 

Fascinating, disturbing and memorable, this is the best non-fiction book I've read in years.

10/10

The Girls

The Girls
by Emma Cline
Published June, 2016

The Girls is probably not the best book I've read this year (which is not to say that it's not good, just that there's some pretty tough competition), but it has some of the best writing I've read in years. Emma Cline is an incredibly talented writer - she's like some kind of crazy talented word-magician with a real gift for bringing language to life.

Set largely in late-1960s California, The Girls follows naive fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd as she encounters a glamorously free-spirited group of older girls and is drawn into their lives in a seemingly peaceful sect, led by the charismatic (if slightly creepy) Russell. Evie starts to spend more time with the group and less time with her family and friends as events start to spiral towards ominously familiar consequences.  

I can't over-emphasise just how good the writing is in The Girls. I started out by highlighting the especially good passages but quite honestly, I'd given up on this by half-way through the book because there's just so much in there that's just beautifully written. The writing is particularly good and wonderfully insightful when it comes to the teenaged narrator's perspective. The Girls sums up so perfectly what it's like to be a teenaged girl - things that I'd forgotten I ever thought or wanted or believed - but reading this book brings it all back like it was yesterday (it wasn't yesterday. Scarily enough, it was a good 20 years ago).
"So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play".

Throughout The Girls, Evie makes some pretty stupid decisions. The plot of the book hinges on her doing these really dumb things (like hanging out with a cult, for one) and this would not be credible at all, except that these are exactly the kinds of decisions a star-struck teenager would make. The Girls reminds you of just how desperate teenagers can be - desperate for company, desperate for experience, desperate to be understood and desperate to be noticed - and in this context, everything makes perfect sense.

The Manson girls going to trial in 1970 - Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel & Laslie van Houten.

There are obvious parallels to the real-life Manson murders and while The Girls is not exactly a retelling of real-life events, it provides some fascinating insight into how such horrific events might have come about; it goes a long way towards explaining the seemingly unexplainable, which is a pretty impressive achievement.

Emma Cline's writing is beautiful, subtle and incredibly insightful. The Girls is very readable, fast-paced and never boring, providing a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a teenager going a little off-the-rails at a very unique time in history.

8/10

Different Class

Different Class
by Joanne Harris
Published April, 2016

Let me start by saying that I think Joanne Harris is fabulous. Her earlier books (Five Quarters of the Orange, Blackberry Wine and of course, Chocolat) were some of my absolute favourites back in the early 2000s but I'm ashamed to say that since then, I'd kind of forgotten just how fabulous she is. Different Class serves as a timely reminder that I really need to find copies of everything else she's written, immediately.

How's that for creepy..?

Set in the fictional North Yorkshire town of Malbry (also featured in her novels Blueeyedboy and Gentlemen and Players), Different Class revisits St Oswald's Grammar School, where Latin master Roy Straitley is entering his thirtieth year of teaching. With the school in academic and financial decline, a new headmaster is brought in - complete with Powerpoint, computer literacy, management-speak and a Crisis Management Team. As if this wasn't bad enough for the decidedly old-school Mr Straitley, the new head is also rather familiar to him ("The arrogant, sullen little boy has been reborn as a smiling, smooth-voiced politician"), stirring memories of a twenty-year-old school scandal, when a St Oswald's boy did some very, very bad things.

As chapters alternate between Straitley's present-day narration, Straitley's twenty-years-ago narration and some very disturbing historical diary entries, the story of the scandal becomes clearer and suspense builds beautifully. The unique setting of St Oswald's is beautifully brought to life in all its dusty, scholarly glory, as the world of chalk-covered, gown-wearing Straitley collides disastrously with the dawning age of education-as-business. The characters are wonderfully memorable and Joanne Harris writes with incredible insight, from the perspective of everyone from elderly gentlemen, to tormented adolescents, to a complete psychopath, all of it completely convincing.    

Admittedly, this is completely unrelated but this is also one of the BEST ALBUMS EVER.

Different Class is dark, creepy and incredibly compelling - the characters and the story will draw you in so quickly that a relatively lengthy book becomes a single-sitting read.  It's shadowy and disturbing but it's also genuinely funny in parts, Joanne Harris bringing a wry tone of humour to a story that might otherwise take itself a little too seriously. This comes largely through the wonderfully sardonic tone of narrator Mr Straitley, who is just fabulous. For example: "Penny once went on a course entitled Kids in Counselling, which left her under the delusion that she is approachable and relates well to 'youth issues'", or "Bob Strange seems impressed by the fact that, under the new regime, all St Oswald's current problems will be transferred to a series of policy documents, and will therefore completely cease to exist in the real world", or (on the subject of Parent Teacher evenings) "I shook their hands and invited them in (much as folklore dictates we should invite a vampire before he can feed)".

With Gentlemen and Players (set before Different Class) and Blueeyedboy (set afterwards), Different Class completes a trilogy of novels set in and around Malbry. Many of the characters appear in all three books and there are common settings and themes across the three. While I have now read all three books, I must confess to having completely forgotten everything about Gentlemen and Players (except that it was set at St Oswald's school) and Blueeyedboy (except that the main character was decidedly creepy). This very minimal understanding of the background story did not impact on my enjoyment of Different Class in the slightest. Haven't read the other two books? No problem at all. Different Class works beautifully as a stand-alone book, with no previous reading required. Having said that though, I plan to go back and re-read the other two books ASAP, because I loved these characters so much that I really want to find out more about them.

Different Class is a subtle, masterfully written psychological thriller with a rich backstory and a darkly humorous tone. Like everything Joanne Harris does, it's a great read - give it a go and I guarantee you won't be able to put it down.

9/10