Patricia Lockwood takes us on a feverish descent

Author draws from her COVID struggles in ‘Will There Ever Be Another You.’

- HAMILTON CAIN

Some years ago, I was interviewing a Columbia neurologist for a potential article on imaging.

After a tour of her laboratory and MRI scanner, dialogue about the frontal cortex and the mysteries of synapses, she offered a simple declarative sentence: “We are our brains.” I recalled her pithy comment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as clinical evidence emerged that the virus had targeted our brains, among other organs, leaving a biological marker on many (most?) of those infected by SARS-CoV-2 (the official name for the virus, distinguishing it from the disease). The evidence includes heightened risk for stroke, breaching of the blood-brain barrier and “brain fog,” which can linger for months.

Patricia Lockwood, poet and author of the prizewinning memoir “Priestdaddy,” evokes the pandemic’s long tail in her expressionistic autofiction, “Will There Ever Be Another You,” recounting mind-altering effects on her protagonist, “Patricia,” as she and her husband quarantine in Savannah, Ga., during the initial 2020 outbreak and subsequent surges.