My Year Off

On the morning of July 29, 1995, Robert McCrum--forty-two-years old, newly married, at the top of his profession as one of British publishing's most admired editors, and in what he thought was the full bloom of health--awoke to find himself totally paralyzed on the left side, the victim of a stroke brought on by a massive cerebral hemorrhage. In My Year Off, McCrum takes readers through his own education about strokes and the frustrating reality that medical science can neither pinpoint the cause of his stroke nor offer any guarantee of recovery. He poignantly writes about his life being irrevocably changed, and, in a new afterword, how his book has touched others. McCrum's recovery is beset by anger and depression, but also marked by the love of his wife, Sarah Lyall, a love that proves equal to their dismaying circumstances. With excerpts from both their journals sprinkled throughout, My Year Off is much more than a story of recovery: It is a love story of the most realistic--and hence, inspiring--kind.

Robert McCrum is literary editor of London's Observer.