A leading psychiatrist shows how the mysteries of the brain are illuminated at the extremes of human experience.
Veronica O'Keane is Professor of Psychiatry and practising consultant psychiatrist at Trinity College Dublin. The Rag and Bone Shop is her first trade book.
Vivid, unforgettable . . . a fascinating, instructive, wise and
compassionate book . . . there is much for the reader to learn, but
there is also a lot that is simply delightful. -- John Banville *
Guardian *
Wonderful. I love the way Veronica writes . . . difficult concepts
made comprehensible with rich case studies. A must read for every
counsellor, psychotherapist, life coach and psychiatrist. --
Philippa Perry * author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
*
A ruminative yet well-evidenced investigation . . . Most
remarkable, though, are her own, extraordinary personal encounters
with patients - psychotics, depressives, amnesiacs - whose memories
have in some way let them down. O'Keane's unsettling conclusion . .
. will haunt you as much as her revealing and sometimes harrowing
real-life stories * The Sunday Times, Books of the Year *
Fascinating . . . leaves you with a marvelling awareness of what
humans collectively share as memory makers and reminds us that each
one of us is a singular translator of our world. -- Kate Kellaway *
Observer *
A wonderful book in which Veronica O'Keane distils what she has
learned about people in her life as a psychiatrist and
neuroscientist. The reader will appreciate Dr O'Keane's beautiful
prose and her caring attitudes, and will effortlessly pick up
knowledge about how the brain determines our behaviour. -- Robin
Murray * Professor of Psychiatric Research at King's College London
*
A roving, riverine inquiry into memory, experience, the
brain...O'Keane does not try to dazzle us with interpretations and
cures, but dazzle she does with the science, the clarity with which
she can conjure something as ordinary, as bafflingly complex and
beautiful, as a memory forming in the brain. . . O'Keane evokes a
robin in her backyard with a vividness that would shame a good many
novelists I've encountered this year -- Parul Seghal * New York
Times *
O'Keane draws from her clinical experiences to offer a
comprehensive tour of the current state of knowledge about how
memory operates in the brain . . . what makes O'Keane's book
engaging is how she incorporates references to literature and
folklore -- Elizabeth Landau * Salon *
Searching, thoughtful . . . at once scientific, philosophical,
medical and literary . . . rich, revelatory and, in the best way,
unsettling. -- James McConnachie * Sunday Times *
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