Remembering Smell

May 17, 2010
Minnesota garden writer Blodgett (The Garden Letter) lost her sense of smell after using Zicam nasal spray for her cold and had to relearn the central role of smell in the entire makeup of her life. In this thoughtful, informative work, she delves with a layman’s tenacity into the complicated science of smell, its role in evolution, memory, and survival, and how the deprivation affected her own life with her longtime husband, Cam, and two grown daughters. Before the full-fledged anosmia (loss of smell) set in, however, came phantosmia, or being plagued by false smells—in Blodgett’s case, a bad odor like rotting flesh, such as she recognized from the stench of the corpse flower. Traced to the use of Zicam (its ingredient zinc gluconate proved toxic to smell receptor neurons; the FDA has since pulled the nasal spray from the market), her anosmia brought on depression and loss of sexual desire (the role of pheromones). Through her dogged research to understand what was ailing her, Blodgett discovered olfaction’s intimate relationship with the limbic system, which regulates our emotional and instinctive behavior. Thus, robbed of the rich memory tapestry that smell imparted, she couldn’t write, stung by the fear of losing what was real—the pleasures of being human. General readers will find her memoir richly nuanced and broadly researched.

June 1, 2010

Combination popular-science book/memoir of a gardener who lost her sense of smell.

The Garden Letter publisher Blodgett (Midwest Top 10 Garden Guide, 2004, etc.) discovered one day that her olfactory sense had gone haywire. All the worst odors she could think of—rotting garbage, decaying flesh, animal waste—were invading her nose in nauseating waves. The author learned from a doctor that her olfactory receptors had been wiped out, probably by the burning blast of an over-the-counter homeopathic nose spray that she had taken to fight off a head cold. What she smelled, the doctor informed her, were actually olfactory hallucinations due to a condition called phantosmia. It was as though her nose and brain were trying desperately to remember what the world smelled like. Within weeks, however, all olfactory sensations ceased, just in time for Christmas. Gone were the aromas of fir branches, candles, cookies and sweets. The progression of her condition into anosmia—total absence of scent—led Blodgett into a black hole as she pondered what she had lost and how hopeless she felt to convey it. Her loss, however, is the reader's gain, as it inspires by far the best writing in the book. Perhaps overcompensating for the condition, the author became a sponge, soaking up everything she could read and learn about "the primal sense," from medical research to Proust. Her book, which starts unpromisingly in the chirpy tone of a magazine feature, suddenly develops depth, pathos and poetry as it progresses. Blodgett succeeds in raising awareness about this misunderstood, underappreciated sense and how it heightens the pleasure of being alive, even as it plays a subtle role in keeping us alive. "Smells may be slow to register cognitively," she writes, "but they operate with superb efficiency subliminally." So, too, does Blodgett in this book, as she develops from a slightly dizzy suburban gardening enthusiast into a three-dimensional, suffering, intellectual human being.

An uneven book that gains surprising power as it moves toward the end.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2010
If asked to voluntarily give up one of their five senses, the majority of respondents would jettison their sense of smell in a heartbeat. Blodgett would probably have counted herself among that group, until a bizarre reaction to a nonprescription nasal spray made the decision for her. After a brief bout in which she was plagued by the constant stench of the most putrid odors imaginable, Blodgetts ability to smell left her completely. Suddenly, her whole world was turned upside down. A garden writer, Blodgett had reveled in the delicate fragrances of roses and lilies, rejoiced over the savory aromas of basil and thyme. Depressed and angry, Blodgett tackled her problem with an inveterate researchers focused intensity, contacting the leading physicians, neuroscientists, and psychotherapists to help her understand what happened to her and why ones sense of smell is so important. Part personal memoir, part scientific treatise, Blodgetts chronicle of her olfactory ordeal is a revelatory journey into the disconcerting world of sensory deprivation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)