Review Summaries

• Readers value how the book faces its difficult subject head-on while making the narrator’s inner life vivid. Reactions vary because of the heaviness of the theme, but the perspective is unmistakably distinctive.

Reviews

• 疑問と訴え

  高校の教科書より、たぶん小さくて薄っぺらな、明るい色の表紙のこの本は、14歳の少年の軽快な一人称で書かれていて、とても楽に読めます。でも、大きな疑問と訴えとを持った本です。 家族と、自分の身のまわりのものを愛し、いきいきと語る主人公は、脳性まひ。話すことはおろか、眼球すら自分の意思では動かせない。思うようにならない目にたまたま映るもの、耳から聞こえるものと、すぐれた記憶力とを頼りに、頭のなかには豊かな世界を持っているけれど、それを誰にも伝えることができないのです。 ふだん、詳しく知ることのない、脳性まひの人とその家族の生活、彼らが受ける扱いは、想像以上に厳しいものですが、家族が自分を愛していることを知っている主人公は明るく、さらりと受け止めています。でも、主人公の父親の行動は、主人公にとっても、読者にとっても、衝撃です。切ないです。 この本は、作者の想像の世界であって、事実ではありません。けれども、仮にもこういうことがありうるって思っただけでも、たくさんの疑問が浮かんできます。生きているってどういうことなのか。愛してるってどういうことなのか。脳死の判定や、臓器の移植のことを、どう考えたらいいのか。 そして、主人公の少年が持っている豊かな世界が、心に残ります。体の自由を奪われた主人公だからこそ、生きてるってこと、そのものの豊かさが、人の命を奪うこと、そのものの罪深さが、かつてなく鋭くつきつけられるのです。 おすすめです。

• A must read for everyone!

  An eye opening read! This may be a work of fiction, but it’s truly a must read for teens or anyone who knows children who are medically fragile

• Beautiful description of how life is beautiful!

  I first read this book when I was 10. I’m 26 now. I bought this because I lost my childhood copy and it’s a favorite of mine. My uncle who died when I was 2 had a rare disease called mucopolysaccharidosis type 4 aka Hurlers Syndrome plus brain damage from choking on spit at birth. He lived the max lifespan for these people. When I was little I’d visit him in the hospital and we’d laugh together though I can’t say what we could’ve been laughing at. As a kid in elementary school I did a school report on him… only to frighten my class with his face which they considered horrifying. I also liked to think my uncle had his own joys in life. He was basically a vegetable: he couldn’t move, talk, eat, drink, etc. and people were afraid of him because of his gargoyle features and dwarfism. People in my family would talk about him like his life was just a tragedy. As an autistic person I knew too well how that feels. I wanted to believe maybe he wasn’t miserable. Maybe he enjoyed what little of a life he had. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much to does but who knows. I also liked to think he had cognitive thoughts going on his head. Like we all do. This book helped give me comfort that my uncle wasn’t just a lifeless doll. He was a human being and he’s watching over me I know it. This book also describes a unique form of a caretaker parent suffering. Most often we here the story of the parents who say “I wish they were never born, I didn’t sign up for this burden!” But this father is like “Does my son want to have been born? Am I a monster for letting him live!?” Which is a much more compassionate character. I personally can’t stand caretaker parents who have no respect for their child’s humanity and only think of themselves. I believe in God but I would not use this book to promote pro life stances. Personally I don’t think this child’s life is comparable to a fetus. I am pro choice but this is a grown child. Although disability and disease are not valid reasons to abort in and of themselves in my mind. I know the author is prolife and that’s a message of the book that’s why I mention that. But the book itself could be viewed as just telling s story rather than a prolife message. My adoptive mother gave me this book and was given it when she worked at maranathas saddleback church.

• Although short, this is a haunting premise

  Terry Trueman's Stuck In Neutral was inspired by his son Sheehan, who has cerebral palsy, is not able to communicate, and has been labeled profoundly developmentally disabled. Trueman recently penned Sheehan: Heartbreak and Redemption , about his own personal struggle with his son's severe cerebral palsy that inspired Stuck in Neutral. Trueman's protagonist Shawn McDaniel is in much the same boat; he's unable to communicate or control any of his muscles, including his eyes, and even his family has chalked him up as profoundly retarded. But Stuck in Neutral, told from Shawn's point of view, reveals a witty narrator with a photographic memory and a zest for life, even if he's not able to communicate it to his family. There's not a trace of self-pity, even though he's at the mercy of family and caretakers for everything from feeding to bathrooming, and he's in a class of profoundly retarded classmates. The plot revolves around the suspicion that Shawn's father is planning to kill him out of "mercy" for Shawn's suffering and his ever-present seizures. The binding link that weaves throughout the story centers on his father's poem about young Shawn that won numerous awards including the Pulitzer. Now his father, who deserted the family years ago, is a celebrity for his poem that presents Shawn as a helpless, pitiable object, not the funny, smart teenager that he's become, if only in his head, and his father seems inspired by a recent "mercy killing" of another handicapped child. Trueman does a masterful job of leaving the ending open (he penned a novel written from Shawn's brother Paul's perspective, Cruise Control , that explores Paul's feelings towards his brother and his situation, which is also open-ended in its final decision), and Shawn is an utterly hip, real narrator that shows us how easy (and dangerous) it is to judge someone based on appearances.

• Interesting

  If you have ever watched a smart person with cerebral palsy being treated like an idiot by those around him, you will appreciate this short novel. This book calls into question the assumption made by many that a severe physical disability automatically indicates a severe mental disability. Shawn, the protagonist of this story, attends public school in a Severely Handicapped Special Day Class. He is surrounded by people who baby-talk to him and talk around and over him, assuming that he does not understand. Being fiction, one cannot take this story as proof that all people like Shawn are highly intelligent, but it should make one question the assumption that they are not. I loved his description of the Special Day Class, although I thought he was unbelievably forgiving of the people around him. I personally cringe (and sometimes enter into a deep depression) when I have to enter such a class, knowing that the students who are being changed and fed and listening to the same stupid nursery rhymes day after day have surely got other places they would rather be. It has to be extremely frustrating to be so unseen. If this book can make people question their assumptions about people with disabilities, then it has done a wonderful thing. It is less dangerous to assume that someone understands what is going on than to assume that they cannot, in terms of how much damage you are going to inflict on that person. Anyone who is going to work, play, or live with someone with severe CP should read this book. I used to reccommend Christy Brown's "Down All The Days" which is incredible, but a long, hard read and no one finishes it. This book is short and engaging and is more likely to be read.

• Is anybody home? What if there is?

  In a phenomenally personal story Terry Trueman takes us into the mind of a profoundly, developmentally disabled cerebral palsy sufferer who's also a quirky, insightful, vibrantly alive 14 year old. However this kid is pretty much input only. Who can tell what goes on in the mind of a child who cannot even control his own eye blinks? While the protagonist in this story is unable to communicate with anyone in his world , this book gives us an inner monologue that shows us a unique individual who's glad to be alive and who is relishing each and every new life experience with the wonder of a child (and sometimes that of a horny kid). This kid's inner monologue connects with the reader on a level that books seldom do. Written by the father of just such a boy, this book may even afflict the reader a bit too, only the body parts that the sympathetic reader will be unable to control are the tear ducts. And yet for the most part this is NOT a sad, maudlin, tear-jerker of a book. One really needs to read this oneself to experience the full effect but even the visceral dread that one experiences as the kid describes his fear that his father may end his life in order to spare him continued suffering is only accentuated by the feel of having so few pages remaining unread in the book. I've rated Terry Trueman's other book Inside Out as being an unsung work of genius, this, his first book, is perhaps even better. If you ever wanted to really fulfill that old adage about understanding someone by walking a mile in his moccasins, pick up one of these books.

Purchase links