This isn’t normally the kind of book I’d review, mainly because this isn’t normally the kind of book I’d read in the first place. However, I’ve been doing research for a book of my own that I’m in the early phases of writing, and this was a book I recently read for it. My book centers largely around a main character that got a concussion (heavily inspired by my own experiences with a concussion), and so I wanted to read about someone else’s concussion experiences.

And that’s exactly what The Ghost in My Brain does. The author, Clark Elliott, got in a car accident in 1999 that gave him a concussion. This concussion ended up having huge effects on his overall life, which he goes into in excruciating detail. He would often have days that were so bad that his body was physically unable to move, even if he found himself outside in the middle of winter. Clark went through absolute hell with this for eight years, with no signs of getting better. And so, while The Ghost in My Brain talks a lot about the hardships he experienced with his concussion, perhaps more importantly he talks about how he finally started to recover. After eight years, he found two therapists that ended up changing his life dramatically, through using techniques of brain plasticity to help it recover.

This is a bit of a niche subject, obviously, but if the topic interests you, then I think The Ghost in My brain does an amazing job of talking about it. I consider my concussion to be the worst experience of my life, and after reading this book I felt like my struggles were minor compared to what the author went through. I definitely had a lot of overlap between things I felt and things that he described, but there were also a number of other terrifying experiences that I never went through. If you’ve ever experienced the hardships of a concussion, you’re almost certain to find that experience captured in its purest essence in The Ghost in My Brain. I also find the book to be a really useful tool to help people in this situation seek out the help they need to get better, because concussions really aren’t understood well in the medical world, and it’s easy to feel like you’re at a dead end, even when help is out there. I know this isn’t a book that will interest many people, but I thought that it was a fascinating read.

4.5/5