Stuck in Neutral

Shawn is a 14-year-old boy who has cerebral palsy and is unable to communicate. The book is written in the first person and Shawn describes himself as a kind of genius with perfect, total recall, although to the rest of the world he is a 'retard', totally dependent on others for his care. His frequent seizures provide a rather clichŽd metaphor for freedom; they allow him to 'soar' and 'fly' and be 'released' from the 'prison' of his body. In the Author's Note, the writer explains that his intention is 'to invent ... how the world might be for a character, based on what life might be like for my son Sheehan,' who also has cerebral palsy. This is an ambitious task and Shawn's voice is not entirely convincing. It often feels that the true voice of this book is that of the father and his concerns about having a disabled son. Most worrying is the book's justification for the killing of disabled children. The father in the story is a journalist and writer who left the family home years earlier. On an Oprah Winfrey type TV programme, he argues the case for the killing of a two-year-old disabled child by his own father and the reader is asked to share his view that the motivation was love. At the end of the book, he sits by Shawn's beside with a pillow in his hand, telling his son he loves him. We do not know whether he is about to kill Shawn but are asked to believe that whatever he does, Shawn will be 'soaring' and 'flying free'. The book develops the idea that since we do not always know what someone like Shawn might be thinking, it is reasonable to assume that a disabled person might be happier being dead and that some lives are too 'damaged' to be worth living. No doubt, other reviewers will call this a brave and moving account or something similar, but I would be very reluctant to put this book into the hands of young readers, just as I would not give them a racist book or one which told the story of how terrible it is to grow up gay or lesbian. Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan or Bring in the Spring by Hannah Cole are two better examples of how we can understand the lives, needs and desires of young disabled people, even those with severe communication problems.