A review by findyourgoldenhour
How Lucky by Will Leitch
5.0
"I have brought light into this world, and I have been given light from this world. And what light it is! I can say that I have lived. Can you say that you have lived?...I have loved, and I have been loved. This is all we should want. This is all you have to do right now. It's right in front of you. So just take it. I know I plan to."
I started this one feeling a little leery; as the mom of an autistic person, I usually stay away from anything remotely associated with the special needs world in my fiction. I worry it'll be too simplistic, too depressing, too enraging. It's all just too tender a topic for me.
I needn't have worried about that here. I loved this book and devoured it in two days. The storyline is your basic plot driven narrative; it wasn't what made me love this book. It's the voice of the main character, which is so genuine and compelling. He's a young man living with some severely limiting challenges, but he is not an object of our pity nor a source of "inspiration"(ugh). He's a regular guy who has regular thoughts, with a grounded perspective on what actually matters in life. He has meaningful relationships and a feeling of purpose. He is funny! I especially loved that he communicated nonverbally with those closest to him; this may feel like a stretch to some readers, but as the mother of someone who cannot reliably communicate using speech, it felt true to our experience.
Representation matters. Normalize main characters with disabilities without the burden of our pity.
I started this one feeling a little leery; as the mom of an autistic person, I usually stay away from anything remotely associated with the special needs world in my fiction. I worry it'll be too simplistic, too depressing, too enraging. It's all just too tender a topic for me.
I needn't have worried about that here. I loved this book and devoured it in two days. The storyline is your basic plot driven narrative; it wasn't what made me love this book. It's the voice of the main character, which is so genuine and compelling. He's a young man living with some severely limiting challenges, but he is not an object of our pity nor a source of "inspiration"(ugh). He's a regular guy who has regular thoughts, with a grounded perspective on what actually matters in life. He has meaningful relationships and a feeling of purpose. He is funny! I especially loved that he communicated nonverbally with those closest to him; this may feel like a stretch to some readers, but as the mother of someone who cannot reliably communicate using speech, it felt true to our experience.
Representation matters. Normalize main characters with disabilities without the burden of our pity.