Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins - Hardcover

Maxwell, Grace

4.26

281 ratings by Goodreads

9780091929992: Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091929997 ISBN 13: 9780091929992

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

In February 2005, Edwyn Collins suffered two devastating brain haemorrhages. He should have died. Doctors advised that if he did survive, there would be little of him left. If that wasn’t enough, he went on to contract MRSA as a result of an operation to his skull and spent six months in hospital. Initially, Edwyn couldn’t speak, read, write, walk, sit up or feed himself. He had lost all movement in his right side and was suffering from aphasia – an inability to use or understand language. When he initially recovered consciousness the only words he could say were ‘Grace’, ‘Maxwell’, ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

But with the help of his partner Grace and their 18-year-old son Will, Edwyn fought back. Slowly, and with monumental effort, he began to teach his brain to read and speak all over again – with some areas of his mind it was if he had been a slate wiped utterly clean. Through a long and arduous road of therapy he began to re-inhabit his body until he could walk again.

Grace's story is an intimate and inspiring account of what you do to survive when your husband is all but taken away without warning by a stroke.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"Maxwell is a transportive narrator, able to convey the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God aspect of this horrendous yet hopeful story with terrific evocation." (Johnny Davis Q Magazine)

"Funny, full of love but refreshingly unsentimental" (The London Paper)

"Maxwell narrates their remarkable story with barrels of rough-and ready Glaswegian drollery" (London Lite)

"His spirited determination to overcome all that he's been through is humbling to witness" (Guardian)

"A remarkable journey of rehabilitation... The story of Collins's catastrophic illness is horrific, but sometimes funny and, ultimately hopeful too" (Sunday Herald)

Book Description:

A remarkable and poignant memoir of being hit by the hurricane of a stroke and rebuilding your life in its wake

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.