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My Brain and Other Wonders
by Cole Cohen
The summer before she was set to head out-of-state to pursue her MFA, twenty-six-year-old Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space - standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in ten seconds or thirty; if you asked her to let you know when ten minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis - doctors had found a large hole in her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented and mysterious diagnosis, Cole and her doctors and family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the unique world that Cole lives in.
Told without an ounce of self-pity and plenty of charm and wit, Head Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as we watch this passionate, loveable, and unsinkable young woman chart a path for herself.
"Starred Review. Rich with yearning and ache, conveying a scrunched sense of claustrophobia and imagery of cinematic quality ... A beautifully wrenching memoir as piercing as smelling salts.' - Kirkus
"A lemon-size hole in her brain prevents Cohen from accurately judging time and space but not from writing beautifully. She even maintains a sense of humor about it all...Though her specific condition is extremely rare, it's very easy to identify with her and to cheer for her." - Booklist
"Cole Cohen's Head Case is a moving exploration of how we try to make ourselves make sense - to ourselves, to the world - by finding stories that will fit. It's full of hard-won insight, candor and tenderness, delightful wit and surprising grace. " - Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
"Cole Cohen's brain is unusual, and her voice is indelible: this is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer. I can't wait to see what she writes next." - Elizabeth McCracken
"Terrifically readable, while still being piercing and honest about different kinds of struggle, some familiar, some utterly her own. Besides that, Cole Cohen's also really funny. And unafraid of being bleak. And funny/bleak. I so enjoyed being carried along by Cohen's voice." - Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
This information about Head Case was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cole Cohen graduated from the California Institute of the Arts MFA program in Writing and Critical Studies in 2009. She was a finalist for the Bakeless Prize and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs prize in Nonfiction and she has been a Yaddo Fellow. She currently lives in Santa Barbara, California where she works as the Events and Program Coordinator for UC Santa Barbara's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
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