Pieces You'll Never Get Back

January 1, 2025
After a brain injury during the delivery of her son, a woman does not recognize her husband or remember having a baby. "When my neurologist told me that the damage from the strokes had left my brain broken and scattered, when he declared matter-of-factly in his soft, earnest tones that my recovery depended upon me putting it back together as best I could, that there was nothing more the doctors or medicine could do to heal the damage, what he didn't mention was that some of the pieces were simply gone." Ali sensed something wrong from the moment she got pregnant. But her doctors saw only a healthy 29-year-old dealing with the anxiety of a first pregnancy. Then, moments after delivery, she went into a coma. When she came out of it five days later, she could no longer even speak English; only the Urdu that had been her first language remained. In short, nonchronological vignettes, Ali attempts to recount what happened from a medical perspective, fill in her life to that point, and chronicle how she recovered her mind and life. She includes reflections on her relationship to her Islamic faith; in the darkest hour, her parents call India to have an imam scale a holy mountain and recite the Qur'an, believed to persuade God to give a second chance. After being released, she is "nearly as helpless as my newborn"--her mother and husband are baby Ishmael's caregivers for months. She tries to work on an autobiographical novel she has started and, though she doesn't recognize a word she's written, does not give up. Though Ali doesn't name it here, that novel wasMadras on Rainy Days (2004), a PEN/Hemingway finalist. Her neurologist, noting that Ali's is the most dramatic recovery he has ever witnessed, hypothesizes that "the repetitive process of working on a story based on my personal experience" was key. This memoir seems to continue that process. After the halting pace of her recovery, an epilogue jumps ahead five years with dramatic developments the reader is not prepared for. A unique record of what it is like to lose everything we think of as ourselves, and to painstakingly reclaim it.

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Starred review from February 1, 2025
At age 29, Ali's life was perfectly on track. As she and her husband looked forward to their son's birth, she worked on her debut novel in the house they'd recently purchased. After a pregnancy plagued with health concerns--all dismissed by her attending physicians--the author gave birth to her son and fell into a coma after a traumatic labor. Upon waking, she had no memory of her husband, her son, or even where she was. What follows is Ali's long road to recovery. She must redevelop her fine motor skills, regain her cognitive functioning and memories, and relearn who she is. As she fights to put herself back together, she writes her memoir in flashbacks to childhood, peppered with snippets from her Muslim faith--the pieces of herself that still exist, predominantly in her head. While she was initially told she'd never write again, she persisted in reclaiming her craft. Ali's journey to bond with her son is also poignant, as she effectively grows up beside him; in some ways they have the same milestones to reach. Heartbreaking yet hopeful, Pieces You'll Never Get Back embodies a woman full of grit and the determination to rediscover herself and heal from inconceivable damage.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.