Book description
A revealing and unusal memoir by the bestselling author of What I
Loved, an account of her search for the source of her mysterious nervous
disorder which offers a fascinating exploration of the mind and its
connection with the body - 'provocative but often funny, encyclopedic
but down to earth' Oliver Sacks. While speaking at a memorial event for
her father, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down.
She managed to finish her talk and the paroxysms stopped, but not for
good. Again and again she found herself a victim of the shudders. What
had happened? Chronicling her search for the shaking woman, Hustvedt
takes the reader on a journey into contemporary psychiatry, neurology
and psychoanalysis. She unearths stories and theories from the annals of
medical history, literature and philosophy, and delves into her own
past. In the process, she raises fundamental questions: what is the
relationship between mind and body? How do we remember? What is the
self? In a seamless synthesis of personal experience and extensive
research, Hustvedt conveys the often frightening mysteries of illness
and the complexities of diagnosis. As engaging as it is
thought-provoking, The Shaking Woman brilliantly illuminates the age-old
dilemma of the mental and the physical, and what it means to be human.
