Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Norwegian novelist Grue (The Best of All Possible Worlds) elegantly flows between memoir, essay, and intellectual discourse in this magnificent story about living with a disability. Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at age three, Grue writes that schoolteachers assumed he "was not going to live for very long." He juxtaposes doctors' notes from the 1980s--which depicted a childhood "containing little joy"--with his inspiring story of how he overcame the obstacles of living with a wheelchair through intellect and will. In 2008, he attended UC Berkeley and, after graduating, returned to Norway where he eventually met his wife Ida, who "expressed the outrage I had always felt" and forced him to confront why the nondisabled tend to "look away." Grue mines how disability has been portrayed in pop culture--with a "particularly tragic aura" or as a trade-off for a supernatural ability ("Professor X from X-Men had to be paralyzed in order to acquire his telepathic abilities")--as well as his experience online dating in a wheelchair. In doing so, he brilliantly articulates what it's like to be "erased and rewritten," and, more poignantly, what it's like to obliterate the narrative one's been handed. This stunning work isn't to be missed. Agent: Norsk Forlag, Gyldendal Agency. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
This artful, poetic memoir thoughtfully explores life with disability. Norwegian novelist and sociolinguist Grue (Univ. of Oslo) considers his childhood through the lens of who he is as an adult: a successful educator, husband, and father. Grue has lived his entire life with congenital muscular dystrophy. He writes here about learning to accept the physical limitations he encounters in day-to-day life; only when faced with other people's perceptions of him does he see himself through a clinical lens. In this lyrical account, Grue reflects on his diagnosis, but more so on how a diagnosis is only one part of his identity. He thoughtfully muses on the nature of time and describes his life with chronological fluidity, mixing in elements of the past that evolve and acquire new meaning in the present. Grue occasionally digresses from the narrative with relevant quotations and musings, which flow together in a cohesive whole. Crook's translation of Grue's book (first published in 2018 in Norway) upholds the literary quality that won the memoir a Norwegian award for literature. VERDICT An honest look at the complexities of being human no matter how one's body functions. Grue's reflections on life will spark the interest of all readers of literary nonfiction.--Cate Triola, Capella Univ., Minneapolis
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A sensitive examination of the meaning of disability. When he was 3 years old, award-winning Norwegian writer Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative disease that compromised his ability to walk and, doctors predicted, would worsen over time. In a frank and often moving memoir, the author reflects on disability, identity, and difference, drawing on philosophy, sociology, literature, and art: Erving Goffman on the concept of stigma, for example; Joan Didion on grief; Michel Foucault on the clinical gaze. Now a professor, writer, former Fulbright scholar, husband, and father, Grue celebrates considerable accomplishments. "I am writing about all that I wanted to have," he notes, "and how I got it." His parents, both academics, were determined to help him flourish. Their negotiations with the Norwegian Social Services system, however, could be frustrating: "My parents request something, their request is denied, they appeal the denial, they win. This process takes them several months, or years." Nevertheless, the system provided him with benefits such as physical therapy and medical treatments as well as a powered wheelchair that afforded him access to the world, enabling travel to Russia, Amsterdam, Denmark, and the University of California, Berkeley, for his Fulbright. "I am privileged and vulnerable," he admits: privileged because Norway supports its citizens' well-being; vulnerable to people's attitudes about disability as well as to physical obstacles. Grue recalls his loneliness at feeling like "a body that no one, least of all one's self, wishes to know." Who would he have been, he has wondered, if he didn't have a muscular disease? Refreshingly, the author reflects less on his "unlived life" than on the life he lives: The physical deterioration that he anticipated never happened; he found love and companionship; and, he reflects, "at some point or another I stopped thinking about myself as someone who needed repairing." Absorbing, insightful reflections on being human. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
