Tell Me the Planets

Tell Me the Planets

Stories of Brain Injury and What It Means to Survive

Summary

What if you remembered things that never happened?
Or you forgot everything every few seconds?
Or one side of your body stopped working?

In Tell Me the Planets Ben Platts-Mills explores the fractured lives of survivors of brain injury, providing an extraordinary glimpse into their daily struggles to lead normal lives. With empathy and insight, he describes their efforts to understand what has happened to them, avoid homelessness, help others worse off than themselves and make risky, almost impossible medical decisions about their futures.

Essential and inspiring, Tell Me the Planets will take you on a journey to the frontiers of science and the limits of human resilience.

'An absorbing and moving account of what it is like to live with brain injury' Penelope Lively

'Extraordinary' Nature

'Heart-breaking and uplifting . . . a vivid and unforgettable portrait of modern Britain by an extraordinarily-gifted story-teller' Robert Newman, author of Neuropolis

Reviews

  • Platts-Mills writes with truth and eloquence about his relationships with brain injury survivors, and gives us insight into what it is that makes us human, and how those relationships can help us heal
    Julia Samuel

About the author

Ben Platts-Mills

Ben Platts-Mills lives in Hackney and has spent the last 14 years working for Headway East London, the charity that supports survivors of brain injury. In 2013 he led on the development of the life writing project, Who Are You Now? which publishes survivors' stories (www.whoareyounow.org).
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