Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through The World’s Strangest Brains reveals insight into neurological aspects of some extraordinary cases: people living in the realms of consciousness and unconsciousness due to the unique way their brain functions. Each story is adeptly set out by Helen Thomson with both empathy and knowledge. She knows how to engage in conversation and put them on paper as if I was there with the people she spoke with.

By examining these extraordinary cases, the book is a reminder that our abilities to feel things and remember and understand the world should never be taken for granted. We are, after all, living in a ‘reality that is “merely a controlled hallucination, reined in by our senses”.  

Reading this book after Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia is a good thing: I found Thomson’s tribute to the work of Sacks in many chapters (whose writing has inspired her). This book is cross-referenced to a few renowned cases in Sacks's books which help to expand what I learnt in neurology.

Of the many debut books I read so far, I think this work by Thomson is the most intriguing and one of the best ones I have read this year.