Review: The World I Fell Out Of by Melanie Reid

5 stars for The World I Fell Out Of by Melanie Reid.

This is a beautifully written memoir, honest, soul-baring and deeply moving.

Disability is a sensitive subject. It is a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, activities, or senses. It is something that people generally avoid talking about, much less dwell on. In this sense, I feel that the author is very brave. She pens them down and publishes her experiences together with her innermost thoughts in a book for all to see. Her memoir provides invaluable insights on surviving after a life-changing event.

Author Melanie Reid - a British journalist for The Times' magazine - broke her neck and lower back in April 2010 while horse riding, and is now a tetraplegic. This book is about her life after the fateful day. She tells us what it is like when one faces sudden, extreme disability as an adult, the sense of disconnect and disbelief, the feeling of being helpless and powerless to do anything except to watch and listen, and where the only safe place to survive is inside her head. Author Reid reveals the terrors and challenges of rebuilding life, the day-to-day frustration and humiliations of disabled life, and the bouts of depression that plagues her from time to time. She also talks about the impact of neuropathic pain and why she chooses to endure the discomfort as lifelong companion over replying on some of the drugs for relief. All in all, she shares the journey on how she picks up the pieces and learn baby steps by baby steps to move forward and, slowly but surely, to rediscover joy.

I salute author Melanie Reid. She has my admiration for all that she has faced and endured and admitted in her book. There is much courage in revealing what she has gone through, details of her injury, her vulnerabilities, her difficulties, and that of a lucid mind trapped within a motionless body trying to find a new meaning to self-worth. Reading her book makes me very conscious of all the movement I can make, the mobility I am blessed with, the daily walking and running I do with my legs on muscle memory. It makes me grateful for all that I have - a healthy working body.

The World I Fell Out of is not a miracle story. It literally means that. From in the world to out of the world, from the upper world to the lower world, from active to passive, from doer to observer, from able-bodied to disabled. Author Reid sends the message that not everyone with a spinal injury, with enough hard work, will recover some function. Some will not. That is a reality. And so, it is comforting to know that towards the end of her book, she makes mention of being more at peace physically.

Though not a miracle story, this book will still make the reader laugh and cry all the same. Indeed, it is a sad story with the topic leaning heavily on coming to terms with reality. But the delivery of the subject on spinal cord injury is a real eye-opener, and the courage, determination and will to live makes for an exceptionally inspiring true story. I hope there will come a day when this memoir gets translated to other languages including Chinese. It will be a great book for my mother, to see how blessed her life is, how fortunate she has been; a reminder for her to appreciate what she has while she still has it, and be clued up on what really matters in life.


Publisher: Fourth Estate
Publication date: 21 Jan 2021

*** Favourite Quote 1 ***

The real reason we read is to get an injection of empathy; to help ourselves break out of the shell of our own experiences, and enter other human lives, so that we can understand this business of being alive just a little bit better.

*** Favourite Quote 2 ***

We're always blissfully ignorant and complacent leading up to life-changing events.

*** Favourite Quote 3 ***

In the chair I could also access the back of my head with a brush for the first time: by now my bedhead didn't just resemble an eagle's nest; in this one you could hear the chicks hatching.

*** Favourite Quote 4 ***

..life-changing injuries led to further complications which changed your life even more. Ill health created more ill health. For every action there was a consequence.

*** Favourite Quote 5 ***

In life there are golden ages, but the frustrating thing about golden ages is that you don't appreciate you're in one when you're in it.

The art of living well, I think, is to understand how swiftly you get old, and to learn to identify golden ages as quickly as possible. And the real secret is not to be always looking forward, plotting the fulfillment of tomorrow, the job you haven't yet got, the perfect partner you haven't met... Instead, focus on what constitutes your life at the time and love what you already have.

*** Favourite Quote 6 ***

Too much of a healthy life, when you take it for granted, is spent in a whirl of plans, achievements, expectation and wanting, trying to bend time to your will. Only when this is taken away from you do you start to understand the simplicity of being where you are, with what you can see, and the wind you can feel on your face.

*** Favourite Quote 7 ***

Perhaps life, inevitably, is like that - until it happens to you, you have no concept of how everything could disappear in seconds. We all lack perspective on what matters.

So please, pause and appreciate exactly what you have. Don't get angry about discarded socks or wet towels dumped on the floor or traffic jams - these things are irrelevant. Don't waste time and energy moaning about your job, your relationship, the weather or your unfulfilled aspirations.

We only have one life and, take it from me, we should never waste it. So get busy living or get busy dying. Cherish the people you love, change your job, tilt up your face and kiss the rain, follow your dreams. Because you can.

~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid

@}--->>--->>-----

On Good Friday, 2010 Melanie Reid fell from her horse, breaking her neck and fracturing her lower back. She was 52.

Paralysed from the top of her chest down, she was to spend almost a full year in hospital, determinedly working towards gaining as much movement in her limbs as possible, and learning to navigate her way through a world that had previously been invisible to her.

As a journalist Melanie had always turned to words and now, on a spinal ward peopled by an extraordinary array of individuals who were similarly at sea, she decided that writing would be her life-line. The World I Fell Out Of is an account of that year, and of those that followed. It is the untold ‘back story’ behind Melanie’s award-winning ‘Spinal Column’ in The Times Magazine and a testament to ‘the art of getting on with it’.

Unflinchingly honest and beautifully observed, this is a memoir about the joy – and the risks – of riding horses, the complicated nature of heroism, the bonds of family and the comfort of strangers.

Above all, The World I Fell Out Of is a reminder that at any moment the life we know can be turned upside down – and a plea to start appreciating what we have while we have it.

*Blurb from Goodreads*

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