It has been estimated that the adult human brain contains about 125 trillion synapses—the space between the end of one nerve cell and the start of another. The recently retired English neurosurgeon Henry Marsh likes to think of these synapses as standard building bricks that, if stacked on top of each other, would reach way beyond Pluto. Such lofty considerations would induce vertigo in most of us, but Marsh has a playful way of writing about the human brain that is positively empowering.
And Finally: Matters of Life and Death is no exception. It is Marsh’s third, and seemingly final, memoir, after 2015’s best-selling Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery and 2017’s Admissions: Life as a Brain Surgeon. The major difference here is that Marsh, 72, has written it from the perspective of a patient as opposed to that of a surgeon.
