- Title: The Boy in the Moon
- Subtitle: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son
- Author: Ian Brown
- Length: 293 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press
15-Word Review: In a compelling memoir, a father writes about his son, genetics, and disabilities in society.
150-Word Review: There's no hard and fast rule to it, but in general, over the many memoirs I've read, mom memoirists tend to take a personal approach, chronicling every moment and emotion of a child's diagnosis and treatment and day to day progress, while dad memoirists grow impatient with that after about a third of the book and go off researching a particular disability and tackling the bigger questions of how their children will fit in the world and what it all means. In that, The Boy in the Moon reminded me a lot of Little People and Not Even Wrong, two structurally similar dad memoirs that I enjoyed and learned a lot from. In this case, the subjects of research are a rare genetic disorder, cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome, and the place in society for individuals with severe developmental disabilities. If these are issues that obsess you, too, you'll want to travel along.
Is This Book for You?
- It's definitely for you if: you also have a child with profound disabilities and wonder about his or her place in the world.
- It may be for you if: your child is less severely disabled but still a difficult fit in a world that values ability above all else.
- It may not be for you if: you will be offended by a defense of the R-word (which the author makes early on), disdain for a faith-based approach to disabilities, or criticism of conservative politics.
- It's definitely not for you if: you're bothered by stories about people with disabilities always being viewed through the lens of their parents' grief and struggle.
Table of Contents
- Fourteen untitled chapters
Quick Quote: "The truth is, I do not see the face of the Almighty in Walker. Instead, I see the face of my boy. I see what is human, and lovely and flawed at once. Walker is no saint and neither am I. I can't bear to watch him bash himself every day, but I can try to understand why he does it. The more I struggle to face my limitations as a father, the less I want to trade him."
