Engel describes wakening one morning, getting his newspaper off the front step and wondering why it was printed in what appeared to be Cyrillic or Greek. Fortunately he realized he must have had a stroke and, accompanied by his twelve year-old son Jacob, went to emergency at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto where he was diagnosed with alexia sine agraphia caused by the stroke. Although he was still able to write to some extent, he could not read, not even what he had just written. There were other memory problems too and he spent months in rehabilitation where he learned tricks to find his way around the hospital and his life.

As an author and lifelong book lover, the diagnosis was understandably devastating but he was protected from worry in some way by the brain injury itself. Meanwhile, the care for his young son (Engel was a widower) was shared among other family members meaning Jacob had to live out of a backpack for months. Eventually Engel was able to read extremely slowly and with difficulty, but was it enough to re-write and edit the books from which he made a living? When he came up with a plot for a new novel featuring his sweet, humble detective Benny Cooperman, he jumped right in giving Benny a head injury with the same symptoms in Memory Book. Encouraged by Oliver Sacks and with much assistance he successfully published the book, as well as another one since then (East of Suez) when Benny is recovering. Engel describes his condition and rehabilitation without any sign of self pity but with good humour and grace, making this both entertaining and interesting. ( )

At long last I have gotten around to reading this. As a bibliophile I can't imagine anything worse than not being able to read. But for someone who writes for a living, as Howard Engel does, it must be even worse. Even being told your alexia is sine agraphia (in other words inability to read without the inability to write) is scant comfort because so much of what a writer does is to reread and revise one's works. One of the quotes that really drew this home to me:
In the hospital I was being told that while I couldn't read, I could still write. At the time, this was cold comfort. It was like being given permission to tap dance all the way to the scaffold. (p. 81)

But at least being a writer is a help in describing what it feels like to have this condition. Engel wrote to Oliver Sacks while still in hospital and his letter was actually quoted by Sacks in an article in the The New Yorker. Engel was "an assiduous and long-time reader" of the magazine and he was pleased to be quoted in an article there. However, what he really wanted to do was write a story himself that would be printed in the magazine. Maybe this, as well as his fertile imagination, led him back to the computer to do another Benny Cooperman mystery. That book is entitled Memory Book and in it Benny suffers a similar fate as Engel. I haven't read it but now I am even more anxious to find a copy.

If there is anything that could make me want to undergo this devastating condition it would be the chance to not only write to but actually meet Oliver Sacks. Engel called in on Sacks when he went to Manhattan and they subsequently met each other when one was in the home town of the other. I am a huge fan of Sacks and the icing on the cake to this very interesting book was the afterword by him. ( )

The author, a writer of the Benny Cooperman series of detective novels had a stroke and was stricken with alexia - the inability to read, although he could still write, slightly restricted vision and a really bad memory. This book is the story of his time from the stroke until he had his first post-trauma novel published.

Its a slight book, very simply written (which I enjoyed) and somewhat repetitive. He's a brave man, one of life's 'triers', but the book would have been better off as an essay in a suitable magazine.

Five stars for courage, four stars in admiration, but three stars for enjoyment. ( )

This is a very interesting first-hand perspective of the results of a stroke that left Mr. Engel, a successful author, unable to read. He could, however, still write. The book provides more food for thought on the workings of the human brain, a subject that I'm very interested in.

It is also a very personal story of someone with a profound love of reading who refuses to believe he must give it up. It is a story of personal courage and family support. ( )

Howard Engel, a Canadian writer of detective fiction tells the true story of his stroke and subsequent alexia which left him unable to read, but still able to write. I found the book dealt well with the overall experience, but I wanted to know more about how he was able to gain back some skill in reading, rather than just knowing that he underwent rehab, still had a faulty memory especially for names and relies heavily on others including his editors to read back what he writes. Amazingly, he has published another Barry Cooperman mystery in which he situates Barry in a hospital recovering from head injury. ( )