Diane Ackerman has written a love story—pure and simple. A novelist and poet, Ackerman is married to Paul West, himself a memoirist and critic. They live a writer’s life: she writes, he writes, they share a deeply intellectual and playful devotion to words. Then in 2005, West suffers a stroke so powerful that it wipes out the entire portion of the brain devoted to language, leaving this once brilliant wordsmith with only a single syllable utterance—“mem.” There’s loss of sight and physical ability as well. The story of One Hundred Names for Love is Ackerman’s chronicle of the years spent bringing her husband back from this catastrophic event.

What stands out in this very personal story is the effect of West’s language loss both for himself, and within his marriage. These are two people who love words and language. They play word games for pleasure like other couples watch TV. Suddenly there are no words between them. Ackerman, who had researched the brain for her bestseller An Alchemy of Mind, uses her unique understanding of her husband and their shared experiences together with her clinical grasp of the brain’s functions to create her own speech therapy program. As Paul’s language slowly reemerges, she devises Mad Libs based on their times together encouraging West to dig back in his memory to resurrect language functions. “We absolutely swamped Paul with language all day long and insisted that he talk, in pidgin if need be, just as if he were a settler in a foreign country…He didn’t want to do it at first because it’s so fatiguing, frustrating…”

Ackerman gives her readers a compelling account that is infused with love, devotion and intellect. She has written a love story that is equal parts science, medicine and personal journal. Though the fact of West’s stroke is tragic, this is a book that is so full of hope it’s impossible to read with anything other than joy. ~Wendee