The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars
A Neuropsychologist's Odyssey
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The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars
Narrated by:
Simon Bubb
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Narrated by:
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Simon Bubb
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By:
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Paul Broks
About this listen
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars by Paul Broks, read by Simon Bubb.
A man's wife dies. What next? The next day is next, and the next, and so on. He smothers his sorrow and gets on with the days. He's a Stoic. Tranquillity is the goal, but his brain won't rest. As a neuropsychologist he has spent a career trying to fathom the human brain but now, he comes to realize, his brain is struggling to make sense of him - probing, doubting, reconstructing.
Combining neurological case stories and memoir, and with excursions into speculative fiction and mythology, this is an audaciously original, deeply personal meditation on grief, time and selfhood
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Critic reviews
[A] beautifully written investigation of grief ... As an exploration of love and loss, as a portrait of a person and of the nature of personhood, this book is about as true as any I have read (James McConnachie)
A wonderful, strange and genre-defying book (Adam Zerman)
A rewarding mind to spend some time with (David Aaronovitch)
The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars is a work of extraordinary insight and imagination. Broks is a 21st century Dante of the human psyche, guiding us on a journey full of surprise, erudition, and wit (David George Haskell)
In this gorgeous kaleidoscope of a book, the neuroscientist Paul Broks takes us image by image, story by story, into an exploration of life with all its brilliant hues of grief and despair, joy and resilience, biology and society. There's science here, and curiosity, and humanity, all forming a remarkable portrait of who we are - and who we hope to be (Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist)
Broks weaves many threads - memoir, neuroscience, and metaphysics - into a rich fabric of reflection, speculation and deep feeling. This is a work that defies categorization, fusing non-fiction and imagination into a single instrument of piercing insight and emotional honesty (Charles Yu)
Truly remarkable prose . . . Throughout, Broks is like a naturalist taking you through the wilderness of the human mind, and he's a companionable guide. (Eben Schwartz)
A beautifully written addition to brain literature ... will mesmerise anyone curious about the mass of goo inside our heads (John O’Connell on 'Into the Silent Land')
Full of wonders and unsettling new perspectives (Review of 'Into the Silent Land')
Reads as light as a souffle, yet has the resonant depth to haunt you for the rest of your days (John McCrone review of 'Into the Silent Land')
A unique experience
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the best book on grief - up lifting, clever
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Broks is, by profession, a neuroscientist. He is therefore able to tell us something of the biology of consciousness with illustrations relating his work and to some of his patients. Since his wife died he has considered the religious and philosophical nature of consciousness, the way it changes from conception to adulthood and whether, and in what ways, it might persist after death. But there are longer time scales to consider. How has consciousness in Man developed with the species? Is it related to language? What can Greek myth and legend tell us about the way our ancestors thought on the subject?
Brok skilfully twines together strands from myth, legend, personal anecdote, philosophy, neurobiology, developmental biology and psychology to give us an answer which is much greater than the sum of the parts.
I found it an intriguing and riveting read. I was left with almost more to think about after the book was done than before I started. But that is good. That is the nature of consciousness.
Emergent
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