Summary:

Maggie O’Farrell describes the book in a scene involving a casual conversation she has with her mother over tea.

As she lifts the pot to the table, she asks me what I’m working on at the moment, and, as I swallow my water, I tell her I’m trying to write a life, told only through near death experiences. She is silent for a moment, readjusting cosy, milk jug, cup handles. ‘Is it your life?’ she asks. ‘Yes,’ I say, a touch nervously. I have no idea how she’ll feel about this. ‘It’s not…it’s just…snatches of a life. A string of moments. Some chapters will be long. Others might be really short.’ (pp. 142-143)

This conversation is the only place in the book where O’Farrell describes her intentions in writing it. But, what O’Farrell describes to her mother is exactly what the book is, a memoir comprising seventeen “brushes with death,” as she calls these moments. There is no prologue, there are no interludes, there is no coda, just the seventeen stories.

Few people will experience any one of these events, and perhaps only O’Farrell has experienced all of the events she tells us about. She categorizes them based on the anatomy involved in a particular brush with death. For example, some of the chapter names are: “Lungs” (three times), “Neck” (twice), “Abdomen,” “Intestines,” “Cerebellum,” “Circulatory System,” “Whole Body.” The one exception is the chapter, “Daughter.”

Other ways of categorizing the near-death experiences O’Farrell covers could be based on whether they threatened O’Farrell herself or any of her children, whether they were the result of bad luck (e.g., illness) or bad judgment (e.g., near drowning), or whether the threat originated outside the body (e.g., accident) or within the body (e.g., illness, medical procedures). The brushes with death from outside the body involved violence (twice), decapitation (twice), drowning (three times), a plunging commercial airliner, and a knife throwing exhibition. From within her body, close calls involved encephalitis as a child, amoebic dysentery while traveling in a developing country, a Cesarean section gone awry, and a few missed miscarriages (i.e., when fetus dies but no signs or symptoms manifest and surgical procedures become necessary). A daughter was born with severe allergic conditions that caused the child misery pretty much all the time interspersed with episodes of life-threatening reactions. O’Farrell’s son was almost lost in one of her near drownings.

O’Farrell leaves it to the epigraph she placed at the beginning of the book to stitch together how these stories collectively reveal the possibility of the human spirit to get us through the most serious and persistent challenges to our being. For this epigraph, she takes a line from Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar:

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

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This is a gripping, informative, and well-researched book about human blood. An accomplished journalist, Rose George, covers a variety of topics, largely in the U.S., Britain, and Canada but also in Nepal, India, and South Africa. She describes many current issues, provides historical background, and speculates on future technologies, such as replacement of blood by other fluids. There are nine sections:

 “My Pint”  While the book’s title refers to the author's volume of blood, this chapter’s title refers to a single pint she is donating. We read about blood supply (donated and stored blood) in the U.S. and—by contrast—in India.

“The Most Singular and Valuable Reptile” refers to the leech. This arresting chapter describes both historical and  modern uses of leeches to gather blood from humans. She visits a company called Biopharm in Wales where leeches are raised and prepared for shipment to medical clinics and hospitals.  

 “Janet and Percy” is a historical chapter focusing on Dame Janet Maria Vaughan, a central figure in creating the Blood Transfusion Service in England during WWII and Percy Oliver, who guided its predecessor, the London Blood Transfusion Service.  

“Blood Borne.”  This chapter describes Khayelitsha, South Africa, “the ugly backside of Cape Town” (p. 100): a place of poverty, crime, rape, sexual predation, and HIV. While rich nations provide assessment and treatment for people with HIV, poor nations have many citizens infected with the virus and, over time, rising rates of infection. 

 “The Yellow Stuff” describes the plasma portion of blood; it can be frozen (as FFP) and used as a filler for bleeding or trauma patients. Unlike blood—which can only be given without payment—plasma can be collected from paid donors. It is a largely traded commodity, part of a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. Plasma carries Factor VIII, a crucial protein for clotting blood; hemophiliacs lack this and are at risk for death by bleeding externally or internally. Some plasma has been tainted, for example by HIV.

“Rotting Pickles.”  In Western Nepal (and other places), menstruation is taboo. George writes, “We are in a minority among species, and among mammals, to bleed every month.” She reviews historical views of women’s periods, mostly negative. Worldwide, there are many taboos, but also some educational efforts for public health that are helpful in impoverished areas.  

 “Nasty Cloths.” This tells the unusual story of an Indian man named Muruga, “a poorly educated workshop helper” who became a leader in creating sanitary protection for menstruating women. Worldwide, the feminine hygiene industry is some $23 billion. George also reviews related history, including Toxic Shock Syndrome from tampons.  

 “Code Red.” Bleeding is often a fatal factor in trauma, even with the best efforts to transfuse blood into the patient, unit after unit. George observes open chest techniques at a resuscitation. She reviews breakthroughs in blood typing, component therapy, and “buddy transfusions.”  

“Blood like Guinness: The Future.” George starts with images from the past: vampires, human drinkers of blood, past and, even, present. She interviews a purveyor of the concept that “young blood” is healthier than older blood. Can there be, discovered or created, blood substitutes that also save lives? 

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Lily O’Connor is 30 something and working at a seaside arcade in northeastern England. She inherits some money from her mother’s small estate and wants to give her brother Michael his share. But, Lily lost track of Michael during their childhood after they were placed in separate new homes to protect them from the severe abuse their mother was inflicting on them. Michael has become a ne’er-do-well in adulthood, and so Lily’s search for him takes her through the dark alleys of London and puts her in the company of its dodgier inhabitants. 

A bigger challenge to Lily in her search and in her life more generally is her epilepsy. How she experiences epilepsy forms the more interesting and dramatic elements of the story. We see Lily have several seizures  in a variety of scenarios: before a date, on the subway, at a friend’s house, in a hotel room, and in a nightclub. We see how Lily senses them coming on as she says to herself:

Here’s the breath, 
here’s the breeze, 
here’s the shimmer…and I’m falling down the rabbit hole.

We see the ground in front of her becoming fuzzy but closer, then what looks to be her hand reaching out in front of her to lay a sweater down on the ground where she thinks she will land, and then the ground getting fuzzier still as she hits it. From the ground, we see that she can still make out some people bending down to help and others averting their gazes. As Lily loses all focus, hallucinations start, and we see her body floating among patterns of electrical bursts as she experiences them. Next we hear her scream before all goes dark and violent shaking starts. As she regains consciousness, we see what she sees, blurry at first and then as her surroundings come into focus. It may be the inside of an ambulance, a hospital room, or her apartment, where in anticipation of that possibility, she has painted on her walls: Don’t Worry Lily Home Bed Sleep SAFE NOW

As Lily goes into recovery after a seizure, the director takes us from Lily’s point of view to the point of view of bystanders. We see that as a result of these seizures, Lily often sustains bone fractures, lacerations, abrasions, puncture wounds, and bruises among other injuries. She goes about cleaning herself up in a manner that suggests a routine, something she expects. Nevertheless, the loss of time frustrates her.

I just lost 2 days. Chop it up. Chop it out of my life. All the outtakes. What would they look like if you put them all together.

Lily’s adaptation to her seizures and their consequences vexes the physicians she consults, which she does only when her medications are stolen and she needs new prescriptions, and when she is taken to the hospital after particularly bad seizures. These physicians want to get Lily onto newer and presumably better medications. She resists, saying to one of them,

All I want is my old meds back.You know when my scripts change, it messes with my head every time. If you wanna know why I’ve stayed on the old meds, it’s ‘cause I know who I am…You have no idea how new drugs change me, they make me feel like a ghost. Words fall out of my mouth like vomit. My brain, a lump of cold meat. Nah, I’m not doing it.

She decides to forgo all medications if she must move to a new regimen, but it doesn’t go well. Eventually she capitulates, adapts to new medications, and goes on with her life, or as she says, “Thrash, get up, get on with it.”

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Andrew Solomon’s 2012 book Far From the Tree is a study of families with children who are different in all sorts of ways from their parents and siblings to degrees that altered and even threatened family functions and relationships. Years after its publication, director Rachel Dretzin collaborated with Solomon to produce this documentary based on his book. At the time of filming, the children were already adults or were well into their teens. The film looks at how the families came to accept these children and how they sought—with varying success—happiness.  

The documentary focuses on five family scenarios: homosexuality (Solomon’s own story); Down syndrome; dwarfism; murder; and autism. Anyone in these families or anyone who knew these families would never invoke the familiar idiom “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” when talking about these children. These apples fell far from the tree, and Solomon builds on that twist to the idiom to characterize the relationship between the affected children and their families as “horizontal.” By extension, Solomon characterizes the relationship of children who are not different from their parents and siblings in any appreciable manner as “vertical.” 

Only one of the original characters from the book appears in the documentary; the other families are newly “cast.” The film captures the lives of these families with all their challenges and successes, and intercuts footage from home videos the families provided. Dretzin also filmed interviews with parents and in some cases their children. The footage and interviews show how families evolved in their acceptance of their children and their situations as best they could. The best was still heartbreak for some, but real happiness was achieved for others. 

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Olivia Laing, a British novelist and writer on cultural and social issues, tackles the phenomenon of loneliness as a pervasive condition that is both a symptom and a cause of malaise, dysphoria and depression. The book is thoroughly referenced and has an extensive, useful bibliography. Laing begins by describing her own loneliness when she moved to New York City. Somewhat reclusive by nature, she spent hours in her apartment, connected to  the outside world through social media, email and Skype. This leads her to examine the nature of loneliness, its causes and impact on the individual. She then turns to the lives and works of artists who specifically dealt with their own loneliness -- as inspiration, subject matter and personal burden: Edward Hopper; Andy Warhol and his assailant Valerie Solanas; the artist and AIDS activist, David Wojnarowicz; outsider artist, Henry Darger; singers Klaus Nomi and Billie Holliday; tech entrepreneur, Josh Harris, and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Laing weaves in pertinent research (Klein, Harlow, Bowlby, Ainsworth, Weiss, Turkel) and expertly ties their findings to her subjects’ creative lives. Her section on Josh Harris’ radical social media experiments is a pertinent reminder of technology’s role in fostering loneliness. A recurrent theme is that social isolation “leads to a decline in social sophistication which itself leads to further episodes of rejection.” Among the results, she says, are that lonely people are more susceptible to sickness and more likely to die before their time.  

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