A friend sent me the link to an interview with her about her new book thinking I would enjoy it, since the author writes about her experience with her husband, prolific writer Paul West as he suffers and struggles to recover from a severe stroke.
I saw a couple of videos on YouTube with Diane Ackerman and was so intrigued that I bought the electronic format of One Hundred Words for Love for my NookColor.
Yes, the book deals with pain and illness, with loss and the aloneness we all must sooner or later realize in our lives. First we hear about Paul’s tragedy through the sensitivity of the novelist, poet and naturalist who loves him, and to whom he has been married since 1970 according to Wikipedia. And then your soul is caressed by Ackerman's poetic prose.
Ackerman knows about science and nature, and she speaks of them with knowledge and respect, knowing that the word “science” is yet but another word for nature.
I love the information Ackerman shares with me, her reader, about animals and plants. She speaks of these with due reverence for the natural world we forget we belong to or just simply take for granted. As a stroke survivor myself, I really loved the rich information she shares about the brain and its inrincate workings. It nourishes the hope I still keep of recovering from my own stroke.
If you should read this book, be ready to be amazed by the beauty of the English language and Ackermen's total mastery. I felt lucky to have in my Nook the feature of being able to look up the words I didn’t know though many of them were obscure enough that I frequently got a disappointing “Definition not found”.
I’m not done reading A Hundred Words for Love, but I’m confident that I will be able to continue summarizing my impression of this book with one solitary word: Exquisite!
Lastly, let me copy one of my highlighted texts and leave you with that, though I read it to myself in the first person and in the present: "Return was impossible, and there was one direction open; and so we kept our compass pointed forwerd..."
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