One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing [Hardcover]

Diane Ackerman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2011

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the National Book Circle Critics Award

"Diane Ackerman's most enjoyable, intimate, and heartrending work yet."—Atul Gawande

Everyone who cherishes the gift of language will cherish Diane Ackerman's narrative masterpiece, an exquisitely written love story and medical miracle story, one that combines science, inspiration, wisdom, and heart.

One day Ackerman's husband, Paul West, an exceptionally gifted wordsmith and intellectual, suffered a terrible stroke. When he regained awareness he was afflicted with aphasia—loss of language—and could utter only a single syllable: "mem." The standard therapies yielded little result but frustration. Diane soon found, however, that by harnessing their deep knowledge of each other and her scientific understanding of language and the brain she could guide Paul back to the world of words. This triumphant book is both a humane and revealing addition to the medical literature on stroke and aphasia and an exquisitely written love story: a magnificent addition to literature, period.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two phrasemakers and longtime married partners had to relearn a shared, intimate conversation post-stroke as Ackerman narrates in her touching latest work. Paul West, Ackerman's 75-year-old British husband (she is 18 years younger), was a retired English professor and the author of 50-plus books, survivor of diabetes and a pacemaker, when he was struck by a massive stroke that left "a small wasteland" in his brain, especially in the key language areas. For literary minds like West and Ackerman, his inability to formulate language (reduced to repeating numbly the sounds "mem, mem, mem" in anger and confusion) was a shock to them both: "o be so godlike, and yet so fragile," his wife writes in despair. Her memoir of this terrible time, first in the hospital, then at home, records the small victories in his speech making and numerous frustrating setbacks; she even took it upon herself to make up humorous but challenging exercises for him to do, Mad Libs–style. Contrary to the bleak prognosis, West gradually made progress, while their journey makes for goofy, pun-happy reading, a little like overhearing lovers coo to each other. (Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Two wordsmiths enthralled by the glimmering pleasures of the life of the mind have lived together in literary camaraderie for decades. So when novelist, memoirist, and critic Paul West was hit with a stroke in 2005 that left his brain scorched and his body battered, both he and his wife, Diane Ackerman, a poet and the lushly original author of such seismic books as The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007), had a lot to lose. But West never succumbed to his impaired vision, frozen right hand, or, most remarkably, bewildering and silencing global aphasia; and Ackerman, who by fortuitous prescience had conducted extensive neurological research for her book An Alchemy of Mind (2004), proved to be an ideal caregiver. Writing with her signature empathy, curiosity, brilliance, and mirth, Ackerman chronicles West’s heroic battle to reclaim words and mobility and her tailoring of West’s speech therapy to match his spectacular vocabulary and unique intelligence. A master of vivid metaphors and multifaceted narratives, Ackerman candidly addresses the profound demands facing caregivers while explaining the cruel consequences of aphasia, charting West’s against-all-odds return to conversing and writing (The Shadow Factory, 2008) and marveling over the healing powers of language and intimacy. A gorgeously engrossing, affecting, sweetly funny, and mind-opening love story of crisis, determination, creativity, and repair. --Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 322 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1ST edition (April 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039307241X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393072419
• Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 6.8 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Diseases & Physical Ailments > Strokes

More About the Author

Diane Ackerman is the acclaimed author of "A Natural History of the Senses," the bestselling "The Zookeeper's Wife," "Dawn Light," and many other books. She lives in Ithaca, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Recovery for the Damaged Brain April 1, 2011

By Mary Azoy

Format:Hardcover

One Hundred Names for Love is Diane Ackerman's brilliant and inspirational memoir of how she and her husband, the writer Paul West, coped with the stroke that left him - at age 75 - unable to walk, speak, or care for himself in any of the most basic ways. Devastating though it was, the crisis actually couldn't have happened to a better couple - two creative individuals for whom language is nearly as essential as breathing. In addition to the standard treatment protocols, through much experimentation and faith in the brain's plasticity, Ackerman and West developed their own rehabilitation regimen as innovative and playful as it was exhausting.

Four years into West's recovery, Ackerman invites a doctor unfamiliar with the case to comment on her husband's most recent brain scan.

[The doctor] pointed out the damage from the past stroke, in the temporal and parietal lobes, a large dead patch in the frontal lobe, and missing bits elsewhere.

"I'd assume this man has been in a vegetative state," he said with a soft humanity.

On the contrary, Ackerman assures him. By "working the brain hard every day for four and a half years," her husband has not only regained his speech and mobility, but also has written several new books and published a variety of essays.

The doctor shakes his head. "I'm so glad you told me this about him," he said thoughtfully. "It's important to know what's possible."

Certainly possible for two immensely creative and determined human beings who have had the knowledge, will, means, and mutual devotion to take the healing process to its fullest potential. Creative medicine indeed. For which Ackerman and West deserve nothing but the highest regard. But despite all the advances in standard treatment for traumatic brain injury, I can't help but worry about the respective outcomes of the many thousands of brain-injured combat veterans returning to our shores with fewer long-term resources for recovery at their disposal.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking and Helpful April 5, 2011

By Justin Hyde

Format:Hardcover

One Hundred Names for Love is an intimate and heart-wrenching memoir of the author's journey from tragedy to revelation. After suffering a stroke, Diane's husband, also an author, lost his speech and his "rich and sophisticated vocabulary was obliterated." The dynamics of their relationship irrevocably changed and they were forced to begin anew.

This is the story of Diane's attempt to develop a new language whereby the couple may communicate and continue their relationship.

This is a perfect introduction to Ackerman's life and work, and an essential volume for her many fans and supporters.

The postscript entitled "Some Lessons Learned" (as well as the suggested further reading) is invaluable for others who have experienced or are experiencing a similar situation.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Moving March 10, 2011

By Mark E. Seinfelt

Format:Hardcover

The fates can be inordinately even perversely cruel. Everything that lives and breathes will be knocked down and smashed, leveled and overrun by the Destroyer of Delight eventually, but Death's sting is not so sharp as other stabs and punctures. There are crueler cuts and harsher hammer blows. For example, the bolt from the blue that felled author Paul West--perhaps our greatest living stylist in English--in 2004. The devastating stroke he suffered then--which ravaged the language centers of his brain and afflicted him with aphasia--seems more than wantonly cruel, rather the height of injustice, a flagrantly unfair and grevious wrong which gives not only West himself, but all his admirers and fans, all lovers and patriots of the word, just ground for complaint and fist shaking at the heavens.
In her new memoir "One Hundred Names For Love," West's wife of many years, the brilliant poet and natural historian Diane Ackerman details the terrible, heartrending period of Paul's loss of language, his long road to recovery and his eventual ressurrection as wordsmith. Her book is a powerful and deeply touching work. Extremely personal, it transcends the merely personal. It is part and parcel of the human condition that our bodies break down and fail us. All of us will have to tend someone we love. Anyone who has been a caregiver will identify with Diane's plight. Paul's case, of course, remains extremely poignant. What I love about the book is how positive and life-affirming it is. We witness a medical miracle unfold before our astonished eyes and learn, by book's end, that since his stroke Paul has completed three novels including a World War II novel and a science fiction extravaganza entitled "Now Voyager." I, for one, would very much like to read these new works.
That Paul is still writing is something that methinks only Diane could have brought about, or rather her love.