Sacks, Oliver (2008) Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain, Revised and Expanded Edition (Paperback)

The famous neurologist Oliver Sacks brings us, again, a book full of intriguing case studies, this time on music. The book is a collection of heart-breaking and -warming, familiar, puzzling, funny and surreal case descriptions of individuals with various neurological conditions - all somehow affecting the person’s ability to experience, or get emotionally involved with music. The book approaches the subject from the grass roots: Individual stories deliver thread after thread, snippets of information and after a dozen cases, a pattern emerges. The patchwork pattern is not conclusive, nor exact, but it provides a comfortable approximate web of explanations for musical perception. It is easy, however, to get swept away with the cases. For me, the grand picture, was easier to grasp by reading the table of contents than following the main text.

In terms of writing, Sacks does a great balancing act: he describes in intimate detail the personal dilemmas and conditions of his (and others’) patients, and still keeps the writing very tactful. There is no sense of voyerism, nor of sentimentality. Sacks is polite, empathetic, very precise, and clinically analytic. The cases are memorable, and so are also his conclusions.

In terms of the book’s scientific value, it definitely is a great collection of stories but I don’t expect to be citing it that much. Having said that, the text (at least in the revised version) is peppered with references to interesting studies, research groups and patient associations which can prove immensely valuable for people with scientific interest in the subject area. More so, the inspirational boost that comes from learning about neurology and auditory perception by reading stories about real people is definitely enough to recommend the read.