The Sleeping Beauties, Suzanne OSullivan
The Sleeping Beauties, Suzanne OSullivan
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The Sleeping Beauties
And Other Stories of Mystery Illness

Author: Suzanne O'Sullivan

Narrator: Suzanne O'Sullivan

Unabridged: 10 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/21/2021


Synopsis

In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a conta­gion. In the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, employees experience headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises during the night. These are only a few of the many sus­pected culture-bound psychosomatic syndromes—specific sets of symptoms that exist in a particular culture or environment—that affect people throughout the world.
 
In The Sleeping Beauties, Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan—an award-winning Irish neurologist—investigates psychosomatic disorders, traveling the world to visit communi­ties suffering from these so-called mystery illnesses. From a derelict post-Soviet mining town in Kazakhstan to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua to the heart of the María Mountains in Colombia, O’Sullivan records the remark­able stories of syndromes related to her by people from all walks of life. Riveting and often distressing, these case studies are recounted with compassion and humanity.
 
In examining the complexity of psychogenic illness, O’Sullivan has written a book of both fascination and se­rious concern as these syndromes continue to proliferate around the globe.

About Suzanne O'Sullivan

Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan is the author of Is It All in Your Head? (Other Press), which won the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize. She has been a consultant in neurology since 2004, working first at the Royal London Hospital and currently as a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, as well as for a specialist unit based at the Epilepsy Society. She has developed expertise in working with patients with psychogenic disorders, alongside her work with those suffering from physical diseases, such as epilepsy.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on June 25, 2024

3.5 stars Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan is an Irish neurologist who wrote the prize-winning book 'It's All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness.' This book follows in the same vein, discussing illnesses that seem to have no somatic cause. Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan ***** The placebo effect occurs when a......more

Goodreads review by Johann (jobis89) on May 15, 2021

Great audiobook! I find O’Sullivan’s work fascinating and appreciate what she is trying to achieve with regards to our perspective of psychosomatic illnesses.......more

Goodreads review by Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship on December 21, 2021

3.5 stars I found this book utterly fascinating and compelling to read, though after letting it settle a bit I do think it has its issues. As a neurologist, Suzanne O’Sullivan has treated many people with “functional” illnesses—in other words, people with real symptoms, but ones without a pathology th......more

Goodreads review by Pooja on September 05, 2021

Dr O'Sullivan discusses a plethora of mass functional illnesses, including resignation syndrome from Sweden, Havana syndrome, and several more individual cases. This was a really interesting read about a subject I did not know too much about. The author did a good job of scouting interesting cases, s......more

Goodreads review by Nina (ninjasbooks) on May 31, 2022

Very interesting, learnt a lot!......more


Quotes

“At once poignant, surprising and sometimes horrifying . . . Empathic . . . Dr. O’Sullivan uncovers these complex mechanisms while painting a picture of psychosomatic suffering that removes its associated stigma . . . Radical . . . The Sleeping Beauties offers a brilliant, nuanced and thoughtful look at the lived experience of illness while asking important questions about the relationship between body and mind. Dr. O’Sullivan’s rich prose weaves a tapestry as hauntingly beautiful as it is scientifically valid.”
Wall Street Journal

"Fascinating and provocative . . . [O'Sullivan is ] a globe-trotting Lisa Sanders: a briskly professional but secretly tenderhearted disease detective on a mission to dispel misconceptions that have become obstacles to cures . . . O’Sullivan’s logic is, well, infectious."
New York Times

“In my view the best science writer around—a true descendant of Oliver Sacks.”
—Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with the Topknot

“A gripping international journey . . . O’Sullivan has written a medical page-turner that makes a compelling argument for a holistic approach to health care.”
Library Journal


“Fascinating . . . O’Sullivan delivers a razor-sharp study of illnesses that often cannot be explained in traditional medical terms . . . As O’Sullivan masterfully narrates these cases, she movingly allows the subjects to tell their owns stories, too. Fans of Oliver Sacks, take note.”
—Publishers Weekly

“O’Sullivan keenly explains illness templates that are coded in our brains by our sociocultural environment . . . A fascinating view of mind that mingles culture with biology, creating a richly embroidered, albeit difficult, world.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Suzanne O’Sullivan’s beautifully written book interweaves the stories of those afflicted in this way in a travelogue of illness that is ultimately a travelogue of our own irrational, suggestible minds . . . It is a measure of how effective she is at describing the dilemmas and difficulties of treating psychosomatic conditions that, by the end, a visit to a witch doctor begins to feel like the most sensible medical intervention.”
—The Times
 
“O’Sullivan travels the world collecting fascinating stories of culture-bound syndromes, which she relays with nuance and sensitivity.”
—New Statesman
 
“O’Sullivan doesn’t offer easy answers. She just shows us, with wonderful compassion and the minimum of judgment, the ways in which people across the world have manifested symptoms that have helped them through—or beyond—painful situations . . . It is, in every sense, mind-blowing.”
The Sunday Telegraph
 
“To compare any book to an Oliver Sacks book is unfair, but this one lives up to it—not because it is alluringly freakish but because it is so compassionate and so driven by deep curiosity about the human psyche. I finished The Sleeping Beauties feeling thrillingly unsettled and wishing there was more.”
—James McConnachie, The Sunday Times

“Powerful . . . This is a startling and empathetic investigation into the power of the mind, the contagiousness of fear, and the consequences of hopelessness.”
—Booklist (starred)