Playwright Holly Dawson’s memoir tells of memory lapses and a series of seizures that signal something isn’t right. Before visiting a doctor, she had been muddling up words, forgetting people’s names and flooding the bathroom.
The book finds Dawson in conversation with her brain, which is both part of her and a separate entity. “Don’t be cross with me, my love. I am tired,” it tells her. “Between your ears hearing a word and your mouth repeating it, I am doing all this work you don’t see.” Dawson, who is approaching 40 and a single mum of two children, later learns she has epilepsy and a brain tumour, which may or may not be benign. A consultant explains she must wait several months to find out, and so she sets about preserving memories and words while she still has them. “Come. Sit. Take your notebook … write it down,” says her brain.
