Patient - Brossura

Watt, Ben

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0802135838 ISBN 13: 9780802135834

Casa editrice: Grove Pr, 1998

Riassunto

The author--half of the musical group, Everything But The Girl--shares his experience of developing Churg-Strauss Syndrome-- a rare, life-threatening disease--at the age of twenty-nine, reflecting on illness, childhood, family, and survival. Reprint.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

* A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

* A New York Newsday, Village Voice Literary Supplement, and Sunday Times (UK) Book of the Year

* Finalist for the Esquire (UK) Best Nonfiction Award

"Told with great wit and without self-pity, Patient is a sobering look at how life can suddenly be transformed." New York Times Book Review

"[A] flawless telling of his unexpected and drawn-out battle with an extremely rare and nearly fatal illness." New Yorker

"Watt’s spare, delicate prose and natural humility are sweet enough to make this bitter pill of a book go down like candy." Entertainment Weekly

"Funny, frightening, and piercingly vulnerable." Interview

"The reader comes away with an unforgettable understanding of the transformative nature of severe illness. . . . Few have told such a compelling life-story as skillfully." San Francisco Chronicle

"Watt is a sharp observer and a gifted writer. . . . What comes through in this very remarkable story is the author’s sense of self and of the order and surprise of life." Seattle Times

"Unlike so many people who’ve looked death in the eye and lived (long enough) to write about it, Watt doesn’t wax philosophical or draw too improbably many lessons from being desperately ill; he just records his own consciousness as it shrinks to the size of his body and his immediate surroundings, which in fact tells us more about what illness means and what it does to us than any sort of positive-minded propaganda." Village Voice Literary Supplement

"Lucid and affecting." Time Out

"Watt writes like a man in a precarious lifeboat keeping his eyes firmly on the life continuing on shore. . . . It’s his becoming modesty that allows the book the feel of triumph without ostentation." Boston Phoenix

"At once horrifying and humorous . . . [Watt] proves himself to be a talented and insightful author, his prose enlivened by his songwriter’s eye for detail." The Stranger

"Watt is a keen observer of hospital custom, from doctors’ bedside manners, the comfort supplied by nurses, the sameness of daily routine." Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Watt’s unsentimental clarity places his book with the best examples of the form. . . . Patient’s most vivid passages the only times Watt uses poetic language capture the way intense pain shrinks your sense of time to the present, and your sense of place to the body. But the book’s most original segments are calm; through observation, Watt offers a new kind of guidebook, a patient’s guide." San Francisco Bay Guardian

"A vivid, finely wrought look at having one’s future yanked away, and surviving physically and emotionally." Dallas Morning Star-Telegram

"[Watt] chronicles here his nightmarish experiences with humor and an admirable lack of self-pity. . . . His engrossing account is painful yet poetic." Publishers Weekly

"A simple chronicle of the curious mundanities faced by a common person under exceptional duress . . . dispassionate but harrowing, self-focused but not self-obsessed, by turns clear-sighted and pain-blinded. . . . Watt’s plain-spoken account takes a position among the growing literature of the past couple of decades that seeks to demystify the body, to expose its wants, needs, and workings. By studiously hewing to the body’s essentials, even when they prove distasteful, Watt opens himself up without forfeiting privacy or his self-respect." Washington City Paper

"Watt wisely focuses on the fascinating, gruesome, and morbid aspects of his medical ordeal. . . . An artful exposition on one human’s loss of humanity." SF Weekly

"An astonishingly assured anatomy of his ordeal, by turns terrifying, mordantly funny and intensely moving. Many people suffer the pain and indignities of medical treatment; but few have written about it with quite such alarming vividness or clarity." Daily Telegraph

"At once a detailed layman’s account of extended illness and a harrowing biography of a life changed by it. Patient is the rare sort of book that allows you to feel with the author from fear to helplessness and ultimately acceptance and triumph." Weekly Alibi

"Honest and colorful. . . . Watt’s romantic imagination survives the beating his body and mind took as a result of his illness but what really keeps Patient going is the way he injects those desperate months with humor and insight." Austin Chronicle

L'autore:

Born in 1962, Benn Watt is a musician, songwriter, and DJ. He is also an acclaimed author; his most recent book is the memoir Romany and Tom. He is perhaps most well-known for his twenty-year career in alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl (1982-2002). He is an international club and radio DJ, and since 2003 has run his own independent record labels Buzzin’ Fly and Strange Feeling. Having recently returned to songwriting and live performance, ?Hendra”?his first solo album for thirty years?is now available on his new imprint Unmade Road. He lives in north London with his wife Tracey Thorn and their three children. Follow him on Twitter: @Ben_Watt

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Grove Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0802135838
• ISBN 13: 9780802135834
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 192