After reading Andrew Leland’s memoir, The Country of the Blind, you will look at the English language differently ... His own prose is jazzy and intelligent: loaded with statistics and studies in some places, lyrical elsewhere, with licks of understated humor ... Far from a feel-good family chronicle. Leland rigorously explores the disability’s most troubling corners ... A wonderful cross-disciplinary wander. If on occasion its deluge of information overwhelms, this is where one reviewer’s old cliché about eyes glazing over enters everlasting retirement.
Andrew Leland’s memoir about this process articulates beautifully, with energy and honesty, how being held between seeing and blindness has changed him and his views on our ableist world ... Though Leland is accused occasionally by friends of 'over-intellectualising' his situation, his fine sensibility, lucid writing and dignified treatment of his subject feels anything but indulgent. This book invites us all to rethink what it means to desire, to read, to be independent, to sit with uncertainty and to assume a new identity. Leland models how we might accept inevitable changes in our faculties as we age with tempered apprehension, humour and interest.
A fluid, thoughtful writer, Leland finds plenty of fascinating insights during these journeys ... A book about identity ... As a writer, Leland is more cerebral than sensual, so it’s frustrating when his ability to fully examine his experiences and ideas feels a bit hemmed in by this fear of stepping out of line. The sweet spots in The Country of the Blind—and there are lots of them—come when his efforts to comprehend something intellectually tips him over into unexpected emotion ... Full of riches where he had anticipated only deprivation, and with plenty of corners yet to be explored.
Heart-wrenching ... Leland’s voice is wry, thoughtful, and vulnerable ... Perhaps the memoir’s greatest gift is the way it compels the sighted reader to confront not only the paradoxes of blindness but the paradoxes of vision as well.
Through eloquent prose, Leland vividly details his experiences with retinitis pigmentosa ... Providing a raw and honest depiction of what it is like to straddle two worlds, Leland lays his feelings and the realities of his condition out on the table ... Does not leave readers with a sense of sadness—quite the opposite. By mixing reality checks with wit, Leland’s prose exudes hope and authenticity.
This informative and engaging memoir will appeal to readers who like to be entertained as they broaden their awareness of disability and others’ lives.
When the author gets personal, he does so with such honesty and vulnerability ... Emotional but never sentimental, this quest for insight delivers for its readers.
