July 19, 2021
Former Deadspin writer Magary (The Hike) delivers a thrilling account of the harrowing near-death experience that changed his life. In December 2018, after hosting the Deadspin Awards in New York City, Magary had an inexplicable fainting spell that fractured the temporal bone in his skull, causing him to need life-saving brain surgery and to be placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks. “The world had gone missing to me,” he writes, “I was not here. But everyone I cared about was.” After three weeks of “learning to live upright again,” he went home to his wife and three kids in Maryland, but, instead of returning to normalcy, Magary discovered he’d lost hearing in one ear, as well as his sense of smell and taste, and spiraled into a depression. Though his story seems ripe for cynicism, he relays it with compassion and humor, as he recounts fighting “bravely against orthopedic sex swings,” and his struggle to “snatch back pieces of old existence.” Magary did regain some of his hearing and his taste, but the real recovery story here is the path he found to accepting his new self, as a man living with disabilities and a newfound “reverence” for “everyday dad moments.” Exquisitely painful, this work brims with hope.
August 1, 2021
Acclaimed columnist Magary (formerly at the blog Deadspin, now at the blog Defector) chronicles his mysterious collapse and resulting brain injury--through his own eyes and through the perspectives of witnesses to the incident that fractured his skull in three places. It caused a brain bleed that put Magary in a coma for two weeks and left him with a permanent disability. He recounts the events leading up to his collapse in 2018 and describes what it was like to wake up from a coma, feeling lucky to be alive but forever changed. Magary puts it all on the table with his offbeat, dark humor: his spirals of rage about his losses, which included impulse control and his senses of taste, smell, and hearing; his recovery and rehabilitation; and his ultimate acceptance that he could never again be who he was before. VERDICT Fascinating, with wonderful digressions on human anatomy, medical science, and technological advancements in assistive devices. A must-read memoir for anyone seeking answers to their own medical mysteries or navigating the world post-trauma. Magary's writing will draw in longtime fans and new readers.--Alana Quarles, Fairfax County P.L., Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.