The NeverMind of Brian Hildebrand by Martin MyersMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
While I hate to use adjectives that are as bland and overused as the word interesting, I can’t think of any other way to describe this book. In The NeverMind of Brian Hildebrand, we meet protagonist Brian who despite having been characterized as being in a vegetative state by the medical community is the narrator of his story.
Brian is locked in, his body is in a coma on life support, but his mind is still functioning almost perfectly. He has no way to communicate with the outside world. Or does he? As the story progresses, Brian receives visitors who start him on the road to questioning his mental state and his reality.
A couple of other noteworthy books that I’ve read on locked-in syndrome are The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; a memoir laboriously blinked into existence by a French journalist suffering locked-in syndrome. On the fiction side, there’s Lock In about a virus that leaves five million people locked in (fortunately in science fiction there are solutions to that problem). The Nevermind of Brian Hildebrand while fictional lies somewhere in between, it’s a fictional memoir with elements of the fantastic.
Reader participation requires suspension of disbelief as there are several coincidences which are a tad too coincidental. Brian’s communication style relies heavily on wordplay and repetition which while clever can be a little off-putting. Overall, I’d have to call it existential metafiction. And the ending, oh, that ending. It indeed required some mulling over.
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