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Review | Bill Hayes’ love letter to New York and his late partner Oliver Sacks
Hayes and Sacks were together for the last six years of the latter’s life, and this paean will have you falling in love with Sacks all over again
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Bill Hayes’ ode to New York is also the author’s letter of adoration to Oliver Sacks, his partner for six years before the neurologist succumbed to cancer in 2015, aged 82. Hayes’ portraits of both are such that if you had a soft spot for New York or Sacks, you would find yourself falling hard for their charms again. Hayes got to know New York via subway rides. On Sacks’ recommendation, he kept a journal, which saw him making notes on scraps of paper. Many, reproduced in the book, contain the quirky, often brilliant thoughts of Sacks on everything from fireflies and pleasure to words and migraines. “I’m glad I’m not dead,” Sacks once said. We can only be glad he lived, and that Hayes loved him.
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James Kidd is a freelance writer based in Oxford, Britain. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Literary Review, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The National, Time Out and The Jerusalem Post among others. He hosts the This Writing Life podcast (thiswritinglife.co.uk), featuring interviews with writers such as Hanya Yanagihara, David Mitchell, Amit Chaudhuri and Meena Kandasamy, and co-hosts Lit Bits (litbits.co.uk), named by The Observer as one of its top three literary podcasts.
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