Cole Cohen

Head Case: My Brain and Other Wonders by Cole Cohen reads like a a conversation. It is Cole telling her reader how it feels to be Cole. She is brutally honest, and sometimes sounds confused. This seems absolutely perfect to me, because who among us can describe themselves comepletely and without missing a beat here and there?

Cole had been misdiagnosed for years, with her condition determined to be ADD/ADHD, which was the catch all diagnosis for every kid that scratched an itch, daydreamed or show more honestly couldn't stand having to sit under so much light. Meaningless, in my opinion. But since it was the catch all diagnosis of her youth, there she was. Finally, long after it should have happened, she finally had an MRI and saw a neurologist, who found that she had a space in her head, a gap in her brain. Her inability to do math, understand science or recognize space and distance were all caused by this thing. The placement of this gap was somewhat fortuitous, because if it had been elsewhere in her brain, the consequences could have been much more dire.

The honesty and openness of this touching memoir, this story of how Cole lives, loves and copes every day is compelling and fascinating. I finished the book feeling as if I know her, and wishing that I did. She will manage, I am sure. Life isn't easy for any of us, but it is even harder for Cole. But by writing this, by allowing herself to be seen to be so vulnerable, takes a special kind of strength. You go Cole ! This was a really wonderful read. I hope to hear more from you and about you someday. show less

Nicole "Cole" Cohen has always had great difficulty with certain kinds of ordinary tasks, including crossing streets, doing arithmetic, and keeping track of the passage of time. Her parents took her to several doctors when she was a child, without much result. Finally, about to leave for grad school and desperate for some kind of help that would allow her to learn to drive a car, she visited a neurologist, got an MRI, and learned that she had been living her whole life with a hole in her show more brain the size of a lemon.

In this memoir, Cole talks about the strangeness of living with this knowledge, the impact that her disabilities have had on her life, and the ways in which she attempts to cope with it. Inextricably intertwined with the story of her brain is the story of her life, including the more commonplace difficulties of being a young, artistic, rather emotionally messed-up young woman trying to achieve independent adulthood at a time when that's difficult even for people without holes in their brains.

It's not a perfectly structured book, sometimes jumping around between time periods and topics in a way that's not particularly smooth. And some of the more personal content was really rather uncomfortable to read. Why, I don't know, since giving a window into someone's thoughts and feelings is part of the purpose of a memoir, but it was, anyway, at least for me. Maybe it's that it feels a bit like writing-as-therapy, rather than writing intended to reach an audience.

But we can be very, very glad that the damage was not in a part of her brain that affects her writing ability, because her talent in that area is impressive. It may not be consistently on display throughout the whole book -- much of it is just perfectly readably written without being especially remarkable -- but there are many moments where she comes out with these perfect, vivid, delightful metaphors that are wonderfully insightful, or funny, or both.

One thing I wasn't expecting with this memoir is how much of it I could relate to, in terms of Cole's difficulties. No sense of direction? Frustrating your elementary school teachers by writing letters backwards? Difficulty tracking rapidly moving objects? Being the only kid taking both remedial and gifted classes, on account of being bad with numbers but great with words? All eerily familiar to me. Oh my god, do I have a hole in my brain? Well, no. Probably not. My issues are mercifully mild compared to hers, and seem to have improved a lot more with age. But I think now I know which part of my brain to glare at for its suboptimal performance. And it certainly made me more sympathetic towards her problems, and more personally interested in her coping mechanisms (although she doesn't really go into the latter in the kind of detail one can pick up tips from).

I will admit, though, that other aspects of her life were more difficult for me to relate to, especially her willingness to embrace the quackier end of the medical spectrum -- even if her frustration with the medical system is entirely understandable.

Rating: This one is hard to rate, and probably made even more difficult by the fact that I have an unedited advance copy that's full of a lot of typos and things. Presumably these will be fixed by the time it hits bookstore shelves, but it did make parts of it a little hard to read. I think I'm going to call it 3.5/5, but with the note that it's littered throughout with writing that soars well above that average. show less

I have mixed feelings about this book. When she's detailing her struggle with medical community labels, her feelings about her brain and her disability, and the ways she navigates (or fails to navigate) "normal" life, Cohen is an eloquent and compelling writer. I particularly loved the way she handled describing her series of failed retail and office jobs, which was very funny. Her authorial voice was very enjoyable, and if I saw an essay by her in the future, I would happily read it.

The show more parts of the memoir that dealt with personal relationships seemed comparatively underdeveloped. Other than the boyfriend, Charlie, and his sister, I couldn't tell you if any friend appeared more than once. I even caught myself wondering why she was devoting a chapter to explaining her relationships with her sisters, given that they had barely been mentioned in prior chapters (and immediately disappeared from the book after that one chapter). Charlie and Cohen's parents are better presented, but the personal stories and the "medical memoir" didn't seem wholly integrated with each other.

So I enjoyed her voice and writing style, but the book as a whole felt like it split the difference between a narrative-style memoir and a collection of personal essays. show less

We all have things we do well and things we don't do as well. I am an English and Humanities girl while my sister is a Math and Science girl. This is just the way we are, the way our brains work. When I read about Cole Cohen's inability to tell her right from her left, the way she's spent her whole life getting lost or disoriented, that she has no sense of time, and that she gets math problems wrong in new and unique ways each time she attempts them, among other things, I realized I was show more reading about a kindred spirit. My own issues with these difficulties are of a much smaller magnitude than hers though, as her memoir, Head Case, about the discovery that she has a large hole in her brain where her parietal lobe should be makes clear. Mine are clearly just quirks, sometimes annoying quirks for sure, but hers is a documented case of complete absence.

All her life Cole Cohen has had trouble with things that other people learn with ease. As a child, her spatial and temporal difficulties were chalked up to a changing list of learning disabilities. But none of these diagnoses were the right one as she discovers when she is on the verge of leaving for graduate school. In an effort to get to the bottom of why she is completely incapable of learning to drive or to handle her own finances, in addition to the other problems she's had to fight to overcome or mitigate with coping strategies for her entire life, Cole submits to many tests but no one is more shocked when an MRI shows that she has a hole the size of a lemon in her brain. If this had been the result of a stroke or an accident, it would likely have rendered her incapacitated, but because it seems to have happened organically, she is spared the otherwise likely devastation, a strange ray of light in an otherwise baffling situation.

The first half of the memoir recounts Cohen's difficulties and the long search through the medical community for answers, the many misdiagnoses and finally the completely astounding correct diagnosis. The second half of this slight book focuses on the way she continues to be impacted, how she feels about all of it, and how she lives her life with the knowledge of her disability. She recognizes the lifelong way in which her disability has driven her sometimes difficult relationship with her parents and sisters, knowing that an inordinate amount of attention has had to be paid to her over the years and will continue to be necessary to help her in those problem areas she'll likely never master. She discusses the series of jobs she has had and the reasons she has struggled to hold onto those jobs. And a large portion of this latter half of the book looks at the on and off romantic relationship Cohen had and how the reality of her situation played out in it as well. The memoir is very introspective but it meanders a bit. Cohen doesn't slip into self-pity about her condition although there is some wistfulness for the easy life she'll never lead. Her story is interesting for its uniqueness but perhaps because it is so unusual as to have no real documentation, it feels a bit repetitive by the end. The amazing thing turns out not to be the hole in Cohen's brain but that she has accomplished all that she has, not least of which is writing this generally readable book. show less