The Diving Bell & The Butterfly

Jean-Dominique Bauby

I can think of plenty of nasty things that I don't want to happen to me: cancer, a brain haemorrhage, loss of sight. The gamut of physiological glitches is almost endless. On December 8, 1995, while taking his young son into Paris for the evening, Jean-Dominique Bauby drew what is arguably the shortest straw of all: he suffered a massive stroke which left him completely paralysed. He was only forty-three.

It is almost impossible to imagine the effects of such an 'accident', as the author calls it, but let's try. You're confined to a hospital bed, or propped up in a wheelchair, unable to communicate with your fellow human beings, your friends, your family; unable to express your feelings, your wants, your frustrations. You can't swallow, can't scratch that pesky itch. You can't shout on the nurse to come and turn off that lousy television programme that's driving you nuts. You long to speak, but your larynx won't play ball. Some of those whose job it is to care for you treat you as little more than the vegetable that stroke victims are often considered to be.

But they're not. Although his body was defunct, Bauby's mind was still functioning perfectly and he hit upon the idea of communicating with others by using the only part of his body not affected - his left eyelid. He devised a system based on blinking his eyelid to indicate which letters of the alphabet he wished to use. And that is the genesis of this remarkable book.

It is no sad litany of self-pity. Bauby ponders on the nature of his 'accident', his hospitalisation, his family; he revisits his childhood and visits Hong Kong. He discusses Beatles' lyrics and, almost inconceivably, finds humour in his situation. I could go on, but won't. His prose speaks more eloquently than I ever could.

This isn't so much a book as a testament, a testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit in the most appalling and adverse of circumstances. Reading it makes you wish that the word 'unique' had not been devalued so much, for if anything was ever unique, it is Bauby's book. ****