This Wheel’s On Fire

Blind in One Eye: A Story About Seeing the Possibilities by David R. Ford (FordWords Publishing; 218 pages; available as a Kindle and NOOKbook download)

David R. Ford’s memoir seemed to present an intriguing premise:  Ford, an attorney in a white shoe practice in Washington, D.C. was adopted at birth.   One day someone tells Ford that she spotted a person on a D.C.-area subway that looked enough like him to be his older brother – was it Ford’s older brother (by seven years) who was kept and raised by their birth parents?   This reader assumed that the story of how Ford comes to meet the older brother he never knew, and would come to know him as a person, would make a worthwhile read.   Sadly, there are too many faults in the telling to label it as commendable.

As I have mentioned, Ford is (actually, was) an attorney.   This is something that Ford never lets the reader forget – he either feels that his readers are suffering from Alzheimer’s or he simply tells us this key point repeatedly in an effort to be patronizing…  In fact, if I had placed a Post-It note on each of the pages on which Ford repeats this grand fact, I’d have been running to the store for more supplies:   “I was a lawyer, trained to seek all of the facts and analyze them carefully…  Most lawyers think they are good writers.   Many are, at least in the technical sense; their nouns and verb tenses usually agree…   I should have tried hard to get to him.   I was a lawyer, a persuader.   Now I couldn’t hope to understand my birth father.”   (These are references on two pages, 169 and 183.   You would not, trust me, want me to list them all.)

“I wanted to get into the conversation but wasn’t coming up with anything to say…  I kept up an internal dialogue as we talked, critiquing my performance as embarrassingly stiff and clumsy.”

Ford apparently lacks an outgoing personality and he seems to want to tie this to his legal training.   Sorry, but this is nonsense.   There are plenty of gregarious, extroverted lawyers out there.   Ford just seems to be an introvert who uses his legal background as an excuse for his lack of comfort in the presence of others.

The biggest flaw in this true tale is that when Ford does meet his brother, he finds someone who is older but not very interesting.   His older brother likes to have a good time, especially fueled by alcohol, and cannot manage to stay married.   The brothers have little in common, and Ford comes to realize that his being raised as an only child – a spoiled one – may have been a blessing.

Since there’s so little substance in the meetings between Ford and his older brother, the reader gets much unexpected information concerning Ford’s relationships with his sisters, who were also given up for adoption, as well as about the members of his birth family.   But because so much territory is covered, and so many individuals must be discussed, this reader felt as if he did not get to know a single one of them very well.   Ford’s birth mother and father were alcoholics, and serial giving-uppers of their own children, and it seems like the less known of them the better.

This memoir ends up being a morality play without a lesson, except that perhaps life is either confusing or simply what it is.   A far better account of an adoptee’s experience in making a journey into her past is found in Lucky Girl: A Memoir by Mei-Ling Hopgood.   As I wrote earlier about Hopgood, she is “a likeable narrator without an excess of ego…  we can identify with her.”   If Hopgood happened to be a lawyer, it’s something that goes unrevealed in her personal – highly troubling yet satisfying – story.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the author.   Lucky Girl: A Memoir by Mei-Ling Hopgood (Algonquin Books; $13.95; 272 pages) was reviewed on this site on June 28, 2009, and July 30, 2009.

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Yesterday’s Gone

Left Neglected: A Novel by Lisa Genova (Gallery Books; $25.00; 336 pages)

“I think some small part of me knew that I was living an unsustainable life.   Every now and then it would whisper, Sarah, please slow down.   You don’t need all of this.   You can’t continue like this.”

Once upon a time, a 37-year-old woman named Sarah Nickerson was a successful and driven executive working in New York City.   Not a moment was ever wasted, even while driving her automobile.   Work, work, work was going to result in Sarah’s having a perfect life…

“Ever since business school, I’ve had my head down, barreling a thousand miles an hour, wearing the flesh of each day down to the bone, pointed down one road toward a single goal.   A successful life.”

Except that one day Sarah was rushing down a freeway when she turned her attention away from the road for a couple of seconds too long.   Her car went over a guard rail, turned over and over, and she barely escaped with her life.   Just like that, she had brain damage, resulting in a condition that would not permit her to see things with her left eye.   This accident also left her with basic paralysis on the left side of her body.   In theory, her left eye still worked perfectly fine but her brain had lost the ability to process its signals and, therefore, the left side of her life disappeared.   This condition is known by many names but is often referred to – ironically – as “left neglected.”

Lisa Genova, a former neuroscientist and nurse, applies her medical knowledge just as tactfully and effectively as she did in her earlier self-published New York Times Bestseller, Still Alice (about an Alzheimer’s patient).   Genova writes with such precise focus and detail that the reader believes he or she has become Sarah Nickerson, and battles her physical and mental conditions right along with her.   Sarah is nothing if not a fighter, a very stubborn one.   She plans to beat this thing, and quickly:

“Thank God I’m a competitive, Type A perfectionist.   I’m going to be the best traumatic brain injury patient Baldwin has ever seen…  they won’t be seeing me for long because I…  plan to recover faster than anyone would predict.   I wonder what the record is?”

Like the journalist Nan Robertson in the recovery memoir Getting Better, Sarah decides she’s going to scam the medical establishment if it kills her, and it almost does.   She won’t give in and she certainly won’t back down.   However, she soon becomes exhausted trying to get a broken-down mind and body to work again and even begins to lose track of the days of the week:  “It’s the beginning of March, and I’ve been out of work for four months now.”

Eventually she views herself as fully recovering and re-entering the workforce for, after all, she’s Sarah Nickerson… But what if she can’t beat this thing?

“I have no interest in accepting or accommodating.   I have a brain injury that has not healed and no promise that it ever will.   I used to have a full and successful life.   Now what do I have?”

Well, Sarah has a son with his own medical issues who seems to need her, and a husband who would love to support her, but also loves the idea of her someday bringing in a paycheck again.   Just when they need the “old Sarah” back, she begins to realize the value of taking a time-out from the whirl of Manhattan life and living:  “I didn’t dream of having a brain injury in order to have the chance to sit and think…  That’s kind of a hard price to pay for a little R&R…”   But since she’s paid the price, she just might decide to take advantage of it.

The joyful part of this read is seeing how Sarah finds a new way of living that makes her whole, at least in terms of her spirit and soul.   She gets to see that life can be experienced without Gantt charts and due dates; without people needing her every second of the night and day.   It may have taken a brain injury, but our protagonist Sarah becomes a person who learns to live and love life without hesitation.

Who would have thought it?   Sarah Nickerson, a woman bathed in Gratitude.

Highly recommended.

This review was written by Joseph Arellano.   A review copy was provided by the publisher.

“Remember how you couldn’t put down Still Alice?   Well, clear your schedule – because you’re going to feel the same way.”   Jodi Picoult

Our Book Review Rules

Some book review bloggers with more experience than I have strongly suggested posting a set of book review policies, so here are my Lucky 13 rules.   Fair warning!

1.   I am interested in receiving review copies on most subjects but especially biographies and memoirs; music; poetry; sports; business books; inspirational stories (but not directly tied to religion); popular fiction; crime dramas; Young Adult (YA) novels; children’s books and stories involving animals.   In fact, I’m a sucker for true animal stories!

2.   I am not interested in science fiction; vampire or zombie books; conspiracy theory books; political tracts; books laden with philosophy (been there, done that); overly simplistic self-help books (of which there are many); or books in which the author says the same thing on every page!

3.   If the reference to popular fiction was too vague, let me be clear: yes, I will and have read “chick lit” (distinct from bodice ripers or old fashioned romance) books.

4.   Whenever possible, I like to receive early stage review copies – paperbound galleys or ARCS, even if they are subject to final review, corrections and editing.   No one wants to write the last review of a new book.

5.   Yes, I do want to review books that are being re-released in paperback – especially in trade paperback form.   In this economy, paperbacks are often the only books on the radar screen of economy-minded consumers.

6.   I finish around 80 percent of the books I start, but if I can’t finish it – meaning that attempting to do so is more painful than dental work – I’m not writing the review.

7.   I’m a speed reader but it nevertheless takes me forever to read pages that have not been edited by someone in the world!

8.   Send an e-mail to me at josephsreviews@gmail.com if you want to know if I’d like a copy of your book; but my receipt of your book does not equate to an automatic positive review (I just try to be honest) nor a guarantee that I can or will finish it.   Again, I cannot guarantee that I will post a review of your book because you have sent it to me.   I have a full-time job and a part-time one and family obligations, and these must take priority in my scheduling.   Please do not send me e-mails asking when I will be reading/reviewing your book.  

9.   Some authors want me to not only review their book but to also include a link to their website, or their Twitter or other online address.   Sorry, I don’t do that.   Readers who have seen my review(s) and are interested in more information on an author can do a Google search. 

10. I do not read/review digital or e-books or pdf files.

11. I love audio books on CD, so if your book is available in this format and you or your publisher or publicist can supply me with an audio book copy it’s a big plus.

12.   Publishers, if you send me a book, please do include a P.R. sheet with some basic information on the book and the contact information for the assigned in-house publicist or contract P.R. staff person.   If I post a review, I will make sure to let the contact know when it is posted.

13.   New authors – especially of non-fiction or self-published books – please have an experienced editor vet your work before submitting it for review.

That’s it.   Good reading to all!  

Note:  I will not be reviewing any self-published books between now and August 2, 2011.

Photo:   flickr (electriclibrarian)