Oliver Sacks - The Mind's Eye

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another Excellent book from Oliver Sacks

This is another excellent book from Oliver Sacks. The Mind's Eye is concerned mainly with vision - particularly the question of how our brains process the information from our eyes to form images, and the nature of remembered or imagined images. It is fascinating and illuminating and it has all Sacks's characteristic insight and brilliance combined with immense humanity and empathy with his subjects. It is, as always, quite beautifully written.

Following the pattern of many of his other books, Sacks gives us case studies of patients with some malfunction of their visual perception in which he gives an exceptionally clear, vivid account of the problems and a brilliant analysis of what we can learn from them about the way in which we process and use visual information. All of them are very involving and extremely interesting, and the book closes with a very fine essay about visual perception. The longest, and to me most involving, "case study" (about a quarter of the book) consists of extracts from Sacks's own journal during the time he developed a melanoma on his right retina. He observes the visual effects with characteristic brilliance, but also talks openly about his human reaction to developing cancer, to his treatment and his experiences as a patient and ultimately to losing some of his vision. It is an exceptional piece of writing even by Sacks's own stellar standard, and a very touching personal account.

This isn't a book to relax with after a rough day - it requires and deserves concentration - but it is gripping in its way and immensely rewarding. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it very warmly.