MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThe author is very good about the day-to-day life of the couple, giving us their routines of food, music, affection and sleep. The best details are from his journal, where Sacks is called O ... Throughout the book, Hayes includes portraits of New York strangers: skateboarders, cabdrivers, people met on the subway, the dealer at their local newsstand. There’s an innocent 'gee whiz' quality to his writing here that some readers will find charming, but these characters are pale distractions in comparison with Sacks; a little of them goes a long way. We end the book hungry to know more about the good doctor. His death is still recent, and Hayes probably needed more time to bring his memories of the man into sharper focus. What’s gained in immediacy is lost in weight. Sacks comes across as a gentle, learned, highly eccentric academic, but he was so much more. If you haven’t read any of his books, you would never know what an extraordinary talent he was: cerebral, tender, alien, mysterious.
