PositiveThe Guardian (UK)Oliver Sacks is a perfect antidote to the anaesthetic of familiarity. His writing turns brains and minds transparent ... The Mind\'s Eye, his 11th book, takes vision and visual imagination as the overarching theme, mixing case stories, essays and memoir ... there\'s much to admire. But I confess there were times when my fingers were racing my eyes in a footnote-stumbling scramble to get through to the end of certain chapters. The case histories were the problem. I found some of them overstuffed, both with detail and moral sentiment. There\'s only so much compassion a man can take, only so much astonishment at human resilience. I began to yearn for a shift of register, for failure and despair, for a patient who disappoints or defeats Dr Sacks. But no, there is never anything, ultimately, but uplift ... The Mind\'s Eye would have been a disappointment had it looked no further for clinical material. But there\'s a redeeming fifth case: Oliver Sacks. And when the author steps into the clinical spotlight the book comes to life.
