The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind

by Noga Arikha Narrated by Fenella Fudge

Overview

As her mother slips into the fog of dementia, a philosopher grapples with the¿unbreakable links¿between¿our bodies and our sense of self.¿*
*
A*diabetic*woman awakens from a coma having forgotten the last ten years of her life.*A*Haitian*immigrant has nightmares that begin bleeding into his waking hours.*A*retired teacher*loses the use of her right hand*due to*pain*of no known origin.*
*
Noga*Arikha*began studying these*patients*and*their*confounding symptoms*in order to explore*how our physical*experiences*inform our identities.*Soon after*she*initiated*her work, the*question took on unexpected urgency, as*Arikha's*own*mother*began to show signs of Alzheimer's*disease.*
*
Weaving together*stories of*her subjects'*troubles and*her mother's decline,*Arikha*searches*for some*meaning in the science she*has*set out to study.*The result*is an*unforgettable¿journey across the ever-shifting boundaries between¿ourselves¿and¿each other.

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

The British narrator Fenella Fudge delivers this audiobook with dramatic flair that is captivating on its own merits while never failing to connect with the deepest parts of the author’s message. Fudge’s tonal range and phrasing artistry are a joy to hear performing this beautiful poetic writing. Focusing on the boundary between human consciousness and our physical bodies, this audiobook is a sneaky-smart, highly informative kaleidoscope of fascinating mental health stories. They come across like a slow-moving river but provoke strong currents in the listener’s thoughts and assumptions about being human. The author’s vast knowledge of these matters is juxtaposed with a crisis in her own family—her mother’s cognitive decline and its impact on how the philosopher/historian comes to grips with her mother’s rapidly disintegrating identity. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

"[A] moving account of the self and its unraveling"—New York Times

“[An] extraordinary exploration of selfhood, which blends humane sensitivity with acute philosophical insight.”

—Julian Baggini, Wall Street Journal

“[A] gripping exploration of mental illness and consciousness.”

—Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine

“A gripping confluence of the personal and the scholarly that is able to offer up an unusually holistic exploration of the way selves are lost, and found, under the auspices of modern medicine.”—American Scholar

"An eloquent and informed plea not to reduce ourselves and our existences to categories... A clarion call to a more holistic approach, urging us to find meaning and even beauty in apparent loss and decrepitude."—Literary Review

"[A] wide-ranging, engaging study that encompasses philosophy, history, medicine, memoir, and science," The Ceiling Outside is "a luminous, intellectually dense meditation on mind." —Kirkus

“Noga Arikha is that rare author whose deep knowledge of philosophy, science, and the arts allows her to move deftly from the quandaries of medical diagnosis and the scientific ideas that inform them to the intimate narratives of people afflicted with illnesses that threaten the coherence of that mysterious thing we call ‘a self.’ Astute, compassionate, and brilliant, The Ceiling Outside is finally an adventure story in the bewildering drama of being.”—Siri Hustvedt, author of Memories of the Future

“Noga Arikha is a poet and a painter with the soul of a scientist. Trust her to guide you through a study of suffering and healing that will leave you humanly richer and, wonder of wonders, at peace with yourself.”—Antonio Damasio, author of Feeling and Knowing

“With grace, rigour, and imagination, Arikha brings together the languages of mind, brain, and embodied human experience to give us a book that fascinates on every page.”—Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad

"A moving journey to the roots of the self, which uniquely combines the author's deep knowledge of its neuropsychological foundations with a touching humanistic sensibility. A must read."—Vittorio Gallese, University of Parma, Italy

Library Journal - Audio

09/01/2022

Arikha (Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours) explores the body and brain connection and meaning of self from the perspective of a philosopher and the grieving daughter of a person with dementia. The author details the ways several mental and neurological illnesses affect how the perception of self, time, and space can change owing to physiological and psychological differences. Arikha, not herself a clinician, sits in on clinical sessions of a neuropsychiatric unit and presents examples of various cases and conditions in which a patient has lost their sense of self. The author draws connections from each case to modern and classic neuroscience and psychology. Arikha also draws connections to her own experience as a daughter of a woman whose dementia has progressed. Where the work includes descriptions of research, medical histories, or psychological foundation, narrator Fenella Fudge is easy to understand and speaks clearly, while treating the stories of individual humans, including the author's, with sensitivity. VERDICT Approachable and humanizing, this work is made accessible by the narrator's flowing, conversational style. A worthwhile purchase.—Diana Rocha

SEPTEMBER 2022 - AudioFile

The British narrator Fenella Fudge delivers this audiobook with dramatic flair that is captivating on its own merits while never failing to connect with the deepest parts of the author’s message. Fudge’s tonal range and phrasing artistry are a joy to hear performing this beautiful poetic writing. Focusing on the boundary between human consciousness and our physical bodies, this audiobook is a sneaky-smart, highly informative kaleidoscope of fascinating mental health stories. They come across like a slow-moving river but provoke strong currents in the listener’s thoughts and assumptions about being human. The author’s vast knowledge of these matters is juxtaposed with a crisis in her own family—her mother’s cognitive decline and its impact on how the philosopher/historian comes to grips with her mother’s rapidly disintegrating identity. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2022-02-09
A lucid examination of the self in crisis.

For 18 months, Arikha, a philosopher and author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, attended weekly clinical meetings in the neuropsychiatry unit of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, observing patients who presented difficult, sometimes bizarre, symptoms to their assembled medical team. Like neurologists Oliver Sacks and Antonio Damasio, Arikha, who calls herself a “science humanist,” reflects on these patients in her investigation of overarching questions about consciousness, identity, affliction, and memory. The many cases include a woman in her 30s who could not recall 10 years of her life; a man whose personality split into two identities; an 82-year-old woman, nearly blind, experiencing visual hallucinations; a 50-something married father of five who felt haunted, hearing things and sensing invisible presences. Some symptoms were somatic: One woman’s hand became “the locus for all her anxiety, fear and frustration.” One man lost all feeling on his left side and then could not form new memories. Prominent among these cases was Arikha’s mother, a poet and memoirist who was sinking inexorably into dementia, her memory “shunting her from place to place, as if she were ice skating blindfolded.” Her mother’s mind takes a central place in this wide-ranging, engaging study that encompasses philosophy, history, medicine, memoir, and science. “This book,” she writes, “is about both the self as it studies itself, and the self as it loses itself”; how each of us makes our felt experiences coherent; how memory affirms our identity; and the ease with which our “planned trajectories” can rupture and plummet us into illness. “Our self in time,” writes the author, “is but a thin gauze wrapped around the shifting elements we are made of.” The book is also about the limits of medical and scientific knowledge to treat patients who defy categorization, to empathize with their experience, and to ameliorate their pain.

A luminous, intellectually dense meditation on mind.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176041170
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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