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A review by dmturner
On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
3.0
A rambling memoir that at the beginning paints a very affecting picture of the young Sacks (motorcycle enthusiast, drug addict, gay man, doctor) without whitewashing his weaknesses and mistakes. The second half of the book is a combination of Great Minds I Have Known and Everybody I Love Has Died, and ends rather oddly in mid-air.
Sacks is one of my favorite writers about the strangeness of the human brain (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Hallucinations are on my re-read list), and his books are distinguished by a respect for the humanity of his subjects that turns conventional doctor-speak on its head. He himself had some neurological idiosyncrasies (migraines and proposagnosia, among others) and writes about those candidly too. However, though I managed to soldier through this book, I somehow felt it lacked the respect for himself that dignified his other readings. A shame.
Sacks is one of my favorite writers about the strangeness of the human brain (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Hallucinations are on my re-read list), and his books are distinguished by a respect for the humanity of his subjects that turns conventional doctor-speak on its head. He himself had some neurological idiosyncrasies (migraines and proposagnosia, among others) and writes about those candidly too. However, though I managed to soldier through this book, I somehow felt it lacked the respect for himself that dignified his other readings. A shame.