A Suspect Quartet is the fourth book in The Suspect Speaker Series. It has four novelettes (well, three longer short stories and one novelette) about people with aphasia. The stories are gritty, tragic, funny, and romantic.
Aphasia is the loss of a previously held ability to speak or understand spoken or written language, due to disease or brain injury, mainly stroke.
The other three books had shorter and longer versions for each story. This is not the case for A Suspect Quartet but each one has short chapters, easier to deal with if your reading (or listening) stamina is limited.
The subjects are various: A celebrated but depressed artist and his protege, a Sci-Fi tale about a survivor of an explosion, a hunky adrenalin junky looking for meaning, and a fantasy involving an apprentice magician and his friends.
Autorentext
James is a New Zealander. He was a teacher, actor, musician and music director, a journalist and event manager ? as well as a husband, father and grandfather. He was a voracious reader, a fluent writer and confident speaker.
In 2015, he suffered a hemiparesis, a middle cerebral artery territory infarct.
In a word, a stroke.
He collapsed, paralysed on his right side, and couldn't speak or write. The hospital intervention was rapid and his limbs were free but his speech was absent.
He had/has aphasia.
Aphasia is the loss of a previously held ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease ? in this case, a stroke.
With expert therapists in speech, music and eurhythmy he has re-invented himself. He has a positive and optimistic outlook, electing to view his stroke as a 'stroke of luck'. But his speech is still ? suspect.
"My aphasia forced me to look at my life differently. My expected biography has changed. Now, I am an author ? apparently."
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