SPOKEN

Book Review

By Jan Peregrine

"NOTE—I've known the author in real-life for a few years (about where the book ends), socializing as vegans and involved in farmed animal liberation activism. He sent me his 160,000 word book in PDF form in exchange for a honest review. That's the equivalent of 500+ pages (he single-spaced) and so reviewing it for random readers has been invigorating!

NOTE 2: Parental advisory is recommended, as the front cover warns.

Dedicated to Mary Karr, author of the popular Art of Memoir, Spoken: A Memoir Sprinkled with a Little Quadriplegia by Robert Rieck, Jr. quotes Karr as saying that a good memoir will release the feel-good hormone oxytocin as we connect, so to speak, with its author. She may be right.

Some hormone must've been released because I enjoyed it more the longer I read. Maybe that's just because he had better found his irreverent voice. 

Or it was the Easy X prototype's captioned pictures of a wheelchair turned sex machine he invented. 

Rieck seems to have an encyclopedic memory, helped at times by family, that rivals Bill Clinton's prodigious efforts. Beginning with his birth in small-town Nebraska in the 1970s, he shares what his first words and sentences were and other babyhood milestones (and pictures, which are shared throughout), followed by how much he loved his mother and ignored his kid brother.

There's nothing terribly interesting from a woman's perspective as he describes the games and sports he loved, but I was quite touched by his observing a cicada being born and saving its life from a cicada attack wasp by throwing pebbles at the wasp.

When Rieck shared a very humiliating incident at school that required going home to change clothes, I could feel how humiliated he was.

It finally came out that he was being raised as a Jehovah's Witness and was socially isolated because of it. He also moved often after his parents divorced and he found it very difficult to make friends and had to endure some bullying or teasing. When his older sister married a non-believer, he and the family were forced to “disfellowship” her. I don't know if that devastated him, but they talk today.

I started to find the memoir more compelling with his traumatic experience trying to kill himself at age 21, already divorced, because of emotional turmoil he couldn't deal with and ending up a quadriplegic, unable to much move below his shoulders.

The rest of the memoir relates his journey into life recovering from, denying, accepting, and thriving as a quad. If you've ever wondered about such a life or thought that it was a life you could never survive, then Rieck will show you that his life can indeed be survived with aplomb. From going back to school and becoming a businessman, mouth artist, half-marathon racer, a drug and alcohol counselor, vegan, and animal rights' activist, he's lived his motto of life being ninety percent attitude, ten percent what he called “life.”

I think Robert hopes to encourage others in his life situation, becoming more self-reflective after his injury. He especially reflects on his struggles with intimate relationships and why they don't work out.

I'm kind of in the same situation, although I regained full sensation and have never felt like a Mr. Potatohead, as Robert puts it so wryly. I had my own struggles with relationships and rejections, but I was never in love as Robert so often was.

The memoir ends abruptly, followed by quotes he appreciates to help you live your best life. Why so abruptly? I guess he spoke his truth as he saw it and that's all any of us can do.

I too hope I spoke truth about his memoir so you can decide if it's for you.

Rieck has published Spoken on PDF form that will help charities of his choice."~Jan Peregrine, C3/4 incomplete spinal cord injury. Jan Peregrine's Book Reviews found on goodreads.com.