Intensive Care: A Memoir

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

On the front cover of this slender book is a black-and-white photo of a
cheerful young man sitting behind the wheel of a car. On the back cover
are some scrawled words that look like the efforts of a kindergarten
child.

It was after he could not remember his sons’ names that professional
writer Alan Twigg discovered that he had a massive brain tumor. In the
book’s first section, entitled “Before,” is a short poem whose
first line reads, “This must be how old men feel ...” However, the
poem goes on to talk not of decrepitude, but of a keener appreciation of
life.

The next section, “ICU,” is illustrated with the author’s first
attempts to write after the operation. Now we understand the scrawls on
the back cover; now we see in visual terms the terrible dislocation of a
mind. The broken lines that grace these pages are not recollections, but
rather words written from the edge of chaos. In the last two sections of
the book, entitled “Recovery” and “Afterwords,” respectively,
the lines seem to become more expansive, as do the thoughts they
express.

Alan Twigg has given us a compelling and eloquent account of a
traumatic episode in his life. His book is dedicated, in part, to “all
those who work in hospitals.”