INTERVIEWS

NPR'S WEEKEND EDITION: 

"My first memory is about two weeks after I actually woke up from the hospital. I think what happened is I sort of imprinted on Sonya as the first person that sort of came into my vision and I can't say that I knew exactly the nature of our relationship. But I knew that she loved me, and I grew to love her fairly quickly. And I don't really know exactly the feelings I was having at the time because everything is sort of gray for me at that point."

"His expression and experience at the hospital was nearly angelic... 'Who is here? Who has been here? And who is coming?' ...He didn't really remember the narrative of his life, which became apparent fairly quickly." 

 

KIRKUS: 

"Many of the memories Richard shared during these sessions helped construct the narrative, but they are fleeting, and many now have faded from his mind all together. 'In a strange way, when it's in print the story becomes his memory, because it's laid out there as the agreed-upon thing that happened,' she explains. 'So one of the things I was very cautious about when writing is that we preserve a part of out life that is not the story.'"

 

SPLASH MAGAZINE:

"It was a very, very frustrating experience. When we got back home, and we started going to speech therapy with him, they could describe what has gone on with him, what had disappeared in him. That was very helpful. But when you think about any person trying to get well, you want them to get well quickly. I thought that he'll just do a few speech therapy sessions and then this will all be back. ...It was a shift for me to see that this isn't all painful. This isn't all difficult. It might be a little bit challenging to go over there to where he is. [But] I was in love with this relationship, the curiosity of living this way and being with someone who is so free."

 

SEATTLE MAGAZINE: 

"While Lea and her two young-adult children railed against the reality of this alien father figure, Bandy wasn't bothered by the change... 'Richard isn't experiencing grief for a lost self,' she writes, 'grief pours only from us who knew him before.' Those of us who remember the past cling to it most, because it defines us. 'I'm the one who is terrified of losing my identity,' Lea concludes."
 

NEW YORK POST:

"I was grieving not just for him but grief for the former marriage. All of those ways that we built our lives with each other, the nuances and flirtations, the shared history. And the sexual experience, because that was important to us, and that was lost." 

 

ABC NEWS: 

"You go into surgery, and you don't imagine you will end up with a different man at the end of it."