One More Theory About Happiness: A Memoir by Paul Guest

() "This is a narrative of convalescence. How it begins. [...] The moment you become ill, the instant injury divides you from your life, from the world, from the ones you love and who in return love you, you are floating away from everything and everyone, on numbing ice, desperate for some vestiges of consolation." (pg. 33)

Though this is a good self-description of this memoir, it lacks the concrete details: the author had a bicycling accident at age 12 that left him permanently disabled. He spent most of his childhood, from then on, in physical rehabilitation. As an adult he is still in a wheelchair.

But inevitably, his life goes on. Guest finds he loves to read and write poetry. Through this, he finds his own form of independence. He soon gains a fiancée, earns multiple college degrees, and writes this book.

It's not a bad story. It kept my attention well. It's also an interesting topic - not something many people can speak of through personal experience.

Oh, bonus, there's tons of unusual vocabulary to gain through the reading of this novel. I like that.

"Here I was, their tragic occasion, their almost death. They clapped in the growing dusk while my parents lifted me from the car seat and into the rented electric wheelchair. [...] Shouting praise Jesus and amen and weeping where they stood in the grass and I drove through them, nodding stiffly, making eye contact with no one, [...] clapping and clapping and clapping like a congregation fo fools and for the first time since breaking my neck, I thought, I want to die." (pg. 77)
"As much as I had learned to inhabit my body, with all its changes and difficulties and outright agonies, I had been forced to try to respond to strangers who didn't see me in my broken state, in pain, struggling, so much as they saw their son or daughter. As they saw themselves. For all their curiousity, the questions about which batteries my wheelchair used, or how I used the bathroom, people couldn't help their fascination with ruin. With their future selves. The downward arc of dotage. In me, they could see a rehearsal of the flesh, how it might all end." (pg. 108)
"I found myself babysitting an eight-year-old boy. Seated on my couch, he announced, 'I can use my penis for a bookmark.'" (pg. 163)