Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival [Hardcover]

Karen Brennan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2002 | ISBN-10: 0393019616 | ISBN-13: 978-0393019612 | Edition: 1

Two courageous spirits, mother and daughter, challenged by a new reality after a life-changing accident.

The call came at 6 A.M. Karen Brennan's twenty-five-year-old daughter, Rachel, had been in a motorcycle accident. She was in a coma. Her CAT scan, the neurosurgeon said, was very, very ugly. Instantly, Karen Brennan's life of comfortable dailiness becomes "passionate necessary-ness." Cautioned that her daughter will not be the "same person," Brennan waits and hopes through weeks of intensive care, months of coma, and Rachel's determined efforts to walk again. The joy of Rachel's first words is followed by the discovery that she has a severe short-term memory deficit. Rachel cannot remember or fashion a simple narrative. A professor with a special interest in memory, Brennan takes up the challenge of helping Rachel rebuild herself. Jump-starting her daughter's memory by constantly retelling Rachel's own story, Brennan also fosters the creativity and humor that have always characterized her daughter. Their collaborative effort, bound by love, is a dynamic memoir of recovery and reinvention. Brennan says, "Why am I writing this story? I ask myself. I am writing to discover the situation in which my daughter and I find ourselves. I am writing as a way of grieving, because writing is the only way I know how to work out my loss. And I think if I can construct the story of Rachel's recovery, it might deliver me once and for all to hopefulness." "Being with Rachel is for readers who want to be reminded of why books matter. Karen Brennan's memoir advocates, illustrates, demonstrates the superhuman power of family, its ability to triumph in the face of worst-case scenarios, institutional aloofness, bad luck, and the evil influence of conventional wisdom. The family that emerges here is one built on a great deal of passionate, difficult love. This is a tough and inspiring and heartbreaking book."—Antonya Nelson "Spare, understated, emotionally honest and yet unsentimental, this beautifully crafted memoir succeeds on two levels: both as an extraordinarily moving personal document and as a vital investigation into the nature of memory and narrative."—Andrea Barrett

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brennan was vacationing in Mexico when she received word that her 24-year-old daughter, Rachel, had been severely injured in a motorcycle accident and was in a deep coma. Brennan rushed to her daughter's bedside at Denver General Hospital. The prognosis was poor, but Brennan's faith was steadfast through the months of the coma and the agonizingly slow discovery of the extent of Rachel's brain injuries. Brennan's devotion to her daughter was instrumental in her improvement; she stayed with Rachel in the hospital night and day, lying next to her, talking to her and monitoring her medical care and physical therapy. She also read widely about brain injury, learning about the personality changes, language problems and severe memory deficits that often ensue. Anxious to resume her life as an English professor at the University of Utah, Brennan moved back to Salt Lake City with Rachel. As Rachel began intensive therapy, her most troubling problem was losing her short-term memory. Although she was able to move about on a motorized wheelchair, she would often get lost, having forgotten where she lived. To alleviate the strain of being Rachel's sole caretaker, Brennan moved with Rachel to Tucson, where they had lived years earlier and Rachel was familiar with the terrain. They visited friends in Mexico, where Rachel seemed most comfortable, exploring her talent as an artist and living independently. Brennan, who teaches creative writing, provides readers with a compelling narrative, conveying without bathos how she and her daughter met the challenges that resulted from Rachel's terrible accident. (Mar.)Forecast: Although Brennan's writing is appealing, the interest in her story is limited, focusing almost like a medical case study on her daughter's brain injuries. While inspirational in tone, it will likely speak principally to those who face similar problems.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Brennan is an award-winning fiction writer, but here she tells a true story: how she coped with the aftermath of her 21-year-old daughter's devastating motorcycle accident, helping her to reconstruct her memory and her life.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393019616
• ISBN-13: 978-0393019612
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,346,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for everyone, March 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival (Hardcover)

Brennan's subject is much larger than the aftermath of the tragedy that happened to her daughter. Is her daughter a different person because of her brain injury? Is Brennan, now, becoming a different person because of the way her relationship to her daughter is changing? Brennan worries questions of identity, personality, and the significance of memory with an astonishingly light touch, and she tells a terrific story. You could almost say that Brennan has made good somehow of the tragedy, turned her daughter into an inspiring lesson for all of us--except that Brennan is too smart and too observant of life to be that reductive. Her Rachel is no lesson; she's a treasure and a pain and a person-and-a-half. An often funny, heartening, and inspiring book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone, March 14, 2002

By 

Sandee Rodriguez "Sandee Rodriguez, book luver" (Mi.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival (Hardcover)

This is a wonderfully touching story of brain injury survival that hasn't been seen much. Instead of from a survivors voice, it's from a parents voice. What a couragous and strong woman Karen is. This book shows you what daily life is like living with a survivor. This story reads alot like my own. I identified with Rachel on a very personal level and put me in touch even more with perhaps what my mother went through with me. This is such good writting that I feel I know Karen and her family personally. And not becuase I have brain injury. Read this book! Even if you don't know brain injury, this can apply to any life altering stuggle people go through.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memory Gain, March 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Being with Rachel: A Personal Story of Memory and Survival (Hardcover)

Honest as it is graceful, lucid as it is lovely. Brennan's book deals with the shades of loss and reconciliation inherent in the land of the "mind" where identity and the "self" that we love when we love a daughter, sister, friend is housed and jeopardized on that accidental and foreign map of the brain trauma, coma, and finally memory loss(es) and gains. Being with Rachel visits that daughter, sister, friend, collaborative relationship that walks and tells and re-tells those stories, shared and re-made, until finally, there are paths carved well-enough that two--mothers, daughters, sisters, friends might walk together. A wonderful read.