A Drop in the Ocean
Page 27
17. In the first 49 years of her life Anna loses much that she loves: her father; the man she was having an affair with; the baby she was carrying; her career; and even her mother, in the sense that she feels they have no connection. On Turtle Island she feels that she is losing baby Hamish, she almost loses Pat, she loses her trust in her father, and she loses her dream of staying with Tom on Turtle Island. Yet her life becomes richer as the Island people become her family, and she reconnects with her mother and forgives her father. When she at last accepts that Tom must make his own decision, she learns the hard lesson that love is about letting go. What do you think about this? Can you let go?
18. One of the authors who endorsed this novel commented that A Drop In The Ocean is “a story about belonging—and the ripples that can flow from the family we choose to the family that chooses us.” When Anna met her father’s sister and her son, she liked them, but they did not feel like family; her Island friends had become that for her. How did her “chosen” family help her to bond with her mother and forgive her father? What is it for you that makes a family?
19. Tom’s father’s funeral is a turning point for Anna. Funerals often seem to have this effect on us—our tears may not be just in empathy with the grieving family but also for people in our own lives whom we have lost. Did this scene evoke any emotions in you?
20. How did you feel at the end of the story (before the Epilogue) when Anna had to leave Turtle Island and Tom?
21. Was the Epilogue important for you? If there had been no Epilogue, how do you think you would have wanted Anna’s future life to unfold?
PRAISE FOR JENNI OGDEN’S MEMOIR,
Trouble In Mind: Stories from a Neuropsychologist’s Casebook
“In the spirit of Oliver Sacks, Jenni Ogden takes us on a remarkable journey into the inner workings of the human brain. Her tales examine how we think, how we feel, and how we communicate with the world. Fascinating!”
—DANIELLE OFRI, MD, PhD, best-selling author of Medicine In Translation, and editor of The Bellevue Literary Review
“Ogden amazes us with her insight and her tender humanity and has the bedside manner we all long for from medical people. Warning—don’t read this book in public places, because you’ll be laughing and snorting and wiping away tears.”
—SUE WOOLFE, award-winning author of The Secret Cure
“Like Oliver Sacks, Ogden creates characters who come to life like those in our favorite fiction, and shares with us the fascinating peculiarities of their brains. Trouble In Mind is part science, part human interest, and 100 % terrific.”
—ANN HOOD, best-selling author of The Obituary Writer
Ogden’s lively style and focus on the very human experiences of patients who have sustained brain damage and their distressed family members makes this book a fascinating set of tales. Those who are curious about just what exactly does that gelatinous mass between our ears do will be rewarded with both knowledge about how the brain works and an empathetic understanding of how the disordered brain affects patients and their families, and its ripple effects on society.”
—MURIEL LEZAK, PhD, Professor Emerita of Neurology, Oregon Health & Science University, author of Neuropsychological Assessment
“Ogden's renowned skills as an observer of important neuropsychological phenomena, combined with a novelist's descriptive touch, has produced a casebook that will fascinate at the same time as it educates. A superb achievement!”
—MICHAEL KOPELMAN, PhD, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, King’s College, London
“Ogden brilliantly illustrates the role of clinician as detective, delving into the worlds of neurological patients to reveal the mysteries and vulnerabilities of the human brain. She combines the expertise of a neuroscientist, the insight of a psychologist, and the eye of a novelist.”
—MICHAEL CORBALLIS, PhD, Professor Emerita of Psychology, Auckland University, author of Pieces of Mind, and From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language
“Ogden reaches into deep levels associated with personal diagnosis and treatment whilst covering a very wide range of emotional and social consequences. Readers will be spellbound.”
—BARBARA A. WILSON, PhD, ScD, OBE, Oliver Zangwill Centre for Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, UK, editor of Neuropsychological Rehabilitation
“One of the world’s premier neuropsychologists shares her caring experiences and evaluations of patients who exhibited a rich variety of neurobehavioral disorders. Reading these stories is like having actual clinical experiences.”
—KENNETH M. HEILMAN, MD, Professor of Neurology, University if Florida College of Medicine, author of Clinical Neuropsychology
“Appealing to the general reader as well as experts is rarely achieved, yet Ogden manages it with supreme confidence and great skill. She combines her natural talents as a storyteller and gifted writer with her considerable experience as a highly-regarded neuropsychologist.”
—Taylor & Francis Online
“Losing your mind, that quintessential ‘me,’ even partially, through trauma, disease or disorder, frightens most people. Ogden’s stories about patients she has worked with who have suffered just that—losing part of their mind—are written with feeling, equal to Oliver Sacks at his best.”
—KEVIN ORRMAN-ROSSITER for Australian Bookseller & Publisher
“The product of three decades of hands-on clinical experience, Ogden’s insightful, entertaining, and informative cases will captivate the general reader and inspire students of neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience in their quest to understand the links between the brain and behavior.”
—SUZANNE CORKIN, PhD, Professor of Behavorial Neuroscience, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Permanent Present Tense: The Man with No Memory and What He Taught the World
“Ogden is an engaging writer with the skill to move as well as inform. Her narratives illuminate the lives and troubled minds of a well-chosen variety of cases from 'HM', the most intensively researched patient in the history of neuropsychology, to 'ordinary' people with 'ordinary' neurological conditions. The message, ultimately, is that when it comes to the workings of our fragile brains, nothing is ordinary.”
—PAUL BROCS, PhD, best-selling author of Into The Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology
“Through her writing style and expertise in clinical neuro-psychology, Ogden empathetically conveys the emotional impact of neurological injury to patient, friends, and family together with detailed descriptions of the facts of the case from a scientific perspective. This book shows us the uniqueness of each patient, and reminds us that all of our most interesting cases are real people.”
—Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
photo credit: Dominic Chaplin
Jenni Ogden grew up in a country town in the South Island of New Zealand, in a home bursting with books and music. Armed with NZ and Australian university degrees in zoology and psychology and now with four children, Jenni took up a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked with H.M., the most famous amnesiac in history. Returning to an academic position at Auckland University, she immersed herself in clinical psychology and neuropsychology, writing about her patients’ moving stories in two books, Fractured Minds: A Case-Study Approach to Clinical Neuropsychology (OUP, New York, 1996, 2005) and Trouble In Mind: Stories from a Neuropsychologist’s Casebook (OUP, New York, 2012; Scribe, Australia, 2013). Jenni and her husband now live off-grid on a spectacular island off the coast of NZ, with winters spent traveling and at their second home in tropical Far North Queensland.
Jenni has had a love affair with the Great Barrier Reef since her twenties, when she spent summers on a coral cay rather like Turtle Island, tagging sea turtles. Her novels, not surprisingly, often have psychological and medical subthemes, and her settings draw on her love of exotic and far-flung locations—frequently remote islands.
When she is not writing or traveling, J
enni can be found on the beach—always with a book—or spending time with her family, now expanded to include five grandchildren. Visit her at www.jenniogden.com and sign up for her monthly e-newsletter, and read her blog at Psychology Today.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere.
Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Duck Pond Epiphany by Tracey Barnes Priestley. $16.95, 978-1-938314-24-7. When a mother of four delivers her last child to college, she has to decide what to do next—and her life takes a surprising turn.
Play for Me by Céline Keating. $16.95, 978-1-63152-972-6. Middle-aged Lily impulsively joins a touring folk-rock band, leaving her job and marriage behind in an attempt to find a second chance at life, passion, and art.
Stella Rose by Tammy Flanders Hetrick. $16.95, 978-1-63152-921-4. When her dying best friend asks her to take care of her sixteen-year-old daughter, Abby says yes—but as she grapples with raising a grieving teenager, she realizes she didn’t know her best friend as well as she thought she did.
A Cup of Redemption by Carole Bumpus. $16.95, 978-1-938314-90-2. Three women, each with their own secrets and shames, seek to make peace with their pasts and carve out new identities for themselves.
Things Unsaid by Diana Y. Paul. $16.95, 978-1-63152-812-5. A family saga of three generations fighting over money and obligation—and a tale of survival, resilience, and recovery.
Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff. $16.95, 978-1-63152-976-4. A divorced mother of two gets an app on her phone that lets her be in more than one place at the same time, and quickly goes from zero to hero in her personal and professional life—but at what cost?