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June 1, 2022
New York Times columnist, author, and Duke professor Bruni (Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be) narrates this work, bringing a sense of immediacy and intimacy to a revelatory odyssey that is itself an interrogation of the medical, spiritual, and emotional process by which he deals with the loss of sight. In a conversational, straightforward voice, Bruni describes ischemic optic neuropathy, a rare kind of stroke, that destroyed the vision in his right eye. He illuminates how he comes to process the feelings and adjustments he has had to make: problems in reading print or a computer screen, driving only during the day, the departure of his partner, and the realization that the other eye could succumb too. He takes inspiration from others who have overcome adversity, describing their efforts in terms that can suggest a self-help style of positive thinking, which may annoy some listeners. VERDICT This book is recommended to those curious about the spectrum of vision loss that goes far beyond the stereotypes, to lovers of memoir, to libraries wanting to enrich their collection of blindness-related materials, and to loyal Bruni fans curious about how he learns to navigate the world.--David Faucheux
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 29, 2021
New York Times columnist Bruni (Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be) imparts in this generous memoir the wisdom he learned after he began to lose his eyesight. One morning in October 2017, Bruni woke up with blurry vision, only to later discover that a stroke had destroyed the optic nerve in one of his eyes, leaving the other eye vulnerable to a similar fate and Bruni at risk of total blindness. “t made me tremble, tested me and forced me to see in a new way,” he writes. Coming to terms with his new reality, Bruni delves into the emotional, psychological, and social tolls of losing his eyesight, while musing on the experience of aging, connecting his story to the way Joe Biden’s age was discussed when he was running for president. Despite being widely considered as past his “prime,” Bruni argues that the septuagenarian candidate “defied the naysayers”: “what Biden lacked in zip, he made up for in zen.” It’s a compassionate take on growing older that, when combined with sanguine insights on living with compromised vision, illustrates Bruni’s knack for writing about the unpredictable beauty of the human condition. Smartly mixing memoir and cultural criticism, this movingly speaks to an entire generation. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.
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