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Oliver Sacks: The man who mistook his wife for a hat (1986, Picador) 4 stars

In his most extraordinary book, “one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century” …

Review of 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

And then I read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks. I really didn't like it.
It's a collection of "weird" neurological cases, including, well, the man who mistook his wife for a hat.
In a way, it's kind of scary - because it shows that sometimes, brains do really weird stuff, and that it may happen for what seems to be little to no reason at all. It's also quite fascinating, for the same reasons. And obviously, the answer to the question "but... why? how?" is probably not something that we (we the humanity?) actually know, but it's consequently quite frustrating as well - "this guy has this and this symptoms/behavior - next!"
To me, the whole book felt more like a rambling ringmaster presenting his freak show - I was actually quite unsettled by that. I was also uncomfortable at the idea of "this guy clearly has a soul, that guy doesn't seem to" that come in the early chapters - it made me cringe a lot.
I don't know, maybe I'm missing something there, because most of the comments on the intarwebz talk about how "beautiful" and "touching" this book is, and... well, no. (Well, I have some hypothesis about that "beautiful"/"touching", but they may be a tad too cynical to apply to people I really know nothing about :P.)
So... definitely NOT recommended.