RaveThe New York Times Sunday Book ReviewThe Mind’s Eye is a collection of essays — some of which have already appeared in The New Yorker — but it has a remarkably graceful coherence of theme, tone and approach. Once again, Sacks explores our shared condition through a series of vivid characters ... Given to...un-self-consciously generous gestures, Sacks would seem to be the ideal doctor: observant but accepting, thorough but tender, training his full attention on one patient at a time. For the patient’s benefit and for ours, he illuminates every uncanny detail, brings out every excruciating irony ... The sufferers who write to Sacks receive a deeply empathetic response ... he is most engaged by the process of compensation, how people make up for what they have lost, wresting new possibilities from their newly imposed limits ... So rewarding are the compensations of Sacks’ patients, in fact, that we begin to feel as if the tragedies that befell them were not tragedies at all, but — as the self-help books say — opportunities for growth.
