A review by howdyhoward
Just by Looking at Him by Ryan O'Connell

emotional funny

3.0

I avoided this book for a while because the cover made me think it would be super serious. Instead, it had a light and comedic tone like much of O'Connell's other works. This was a pretty quick read, and while it dealt with some tough topics like infidelity and substance abuse, it kept it light with constant joke cracking. It felt a lot like a coming of age movie (which is a similar theme to the TV shows O'Connell has worked on). There are a lot of aspects of this book that I didn't like. The characters felt kind of surface level and Elliot's perspective was rather insulated. Elliot makes generalizations about all marginalized people (because he is disabled) that ring as especially hollow considering how much privilege he himself has as an affluent cis man. These observations may just be internalized self-hatred, which he begins to shed at the very end of the book, but they are repeated rather often unchallenged and all together leave a bad taste in my mouth. There are other aspects of Elliot's privilege that are generalized by the text (likely because O'Connell is a similar demographic) that other reviewers have pointed out do not apply to racialized people, which could be very off-putting. I was familiar with O'Connell's previous works that share a similar perspective so I was expecting it, but the insulated world of skinny affluent gay men in Los Angeles is probably not one that many can relate to. Your mileage may vary on how much this bothers you. Elliot spends the majority of the book feeling both in control of and made helpless by his disability (cerebral palsy). He uses sex and relationships to feel desirable and bases his self worth on whether others find him attractive.
In the final scene, he has sex with another disabled man for the first time and is able to let his guard down and feel sexy in how his body actually works instead of how (he perceives) others wish it worked.
This scene was absolutely gorgeous and left the (overall mediocre) book on a really positive note for me. I feel a similar way about O'Connell's netflix show Special. While our disabilities aren't too similar, that show was one of the first pieces of media I really related with about my experience with disability, and that makes it really important to me. I wish more of the book could have had Elliot hating his disability less, but everyone goes on their own journey in coming to terms with their bodies.
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