Book Talk: Freida McFadden, ‘Brain Damage’

“Does it hurt to be shot in the head?” If someone had asked Dr. Charlotte McKenna that question two years ago, she would have said, “Of course.” That only makes sense.

But, really, what did she know? She had it all. She was a successful physician, had a million-dollar apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, and was married to Clark Douglas, a lawyer who was so handsome that he defied description. Her life was perfect.

Then the gun went off. According to her (as written by Freida McFadden in “Brain Damage,” 2016, 396 pages in softcover edition), the bullet “passed through my skull, shattering it to pieces, soaring through gray matter, white matter, neurons, ventricles, then back through my skull again, and finally lodging itself in the well-insulated wall that kept our neighbors from hearing the noise of the gunshot. And none of that hurt. The truth is, I didn’t feel it all. What hurt is everything that came after.”