The Inward Empire
Mapping the Wilds of Mortality and Fatherhood
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of The Noonday Demon and When Breath Becomes Air, a father's "remarkable and revelatory" account of navigating his own neurological decline while watching in wonder as his young daughter's brain activity blossoms, a stunning examination of neurology, loss, and the meaning of life. (The Sunday Times)
Soon after his daughter Leontine is born, 36-year old Christian Donlan's world shifted an inch to the left. He started to miss door handles and light switches when reaching for them. He was suddenly unable to fasten the tiny buttons on his new daughter's clothes. These experiences were the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, an incurable and degenerative neurological illness.
As Leontine starts to investigate the world around her, Donlan too finds himself in a new environment, a "spook country" he calls the "Inward Empire," where reality starts to break down in bizarre, frightening, sometimes beautiful ways. Rather than turning away from this landscape, Donlan summons courage and curiosity and sets out to explore, a tourist in his own body. The result is this exquisitely observed, heartbreaking, and uplifting investigation into the history of neurology, the joys and anxieties of fatherhood, and what remains after everything we take for granted - including the functions that make us feel like ourselves - has been stripped away.
Like Andrew Solomon, Paul Kalathini, and William Styron, Donlan brings meaning, grace, playfulness, and dignity to an experience that terrifies and confounds us all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this earnest memoir, journalist and first-time author Donlan chronicles his efforts to "navigate the world" as his life changes in his 30s after two almost simultaneous events: the birth of his daughter and his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. He combines careful and unsparing accounts of the "Inward Empire" of experiencing MS "a place that I am transported to when the truly weird stuff starts to happen" with short descriptions of MS, how it was first discovered in the 1860s as a "disease of cities and factories," and how it is currently treated. As he recounts trying to reconcile the "opposing sensations" that his MS onset has on his mental and emotional condition "the fog of complete bewilderment, the toxic Zen of total comprehension" he also carefully notes his daughter's development over the first few years of her life, as a "different person was emerging, outlined by her new abilities." But Donlan never forces the parallels between his life and his daughter's; the way his family, friends, and doctors deal with his neurological decline leads him to a greater understanding of his role as a person and a father: "to face death and acknowledge its power, and to acknowledge the equal power of life." This is a moving, gracefully written story.
