Is it just me, or has disability/sickness become a chic theme in YA fiction? Big hits like Wonder and The Fault In Our Stars seem to have spawned a slew of imitators, for better or worse. I'm not opposed to the trend at all. Kids who read this fiction likely tend to grow in their empathy toward others. I have seen this personally in my daughter's classmates who read Out of My Mind.
Josh Sundquist's debut novel Love and F1rst Sight is an enjoyable addition to this genre. Will Porter awkwardly begins his first year at a mainstream school, after going to schools for the blind his entire life. Struggling to be independent and to fit in, he is determined to succeed in the world of the sighted. When he becomes a candidate for an experimental surgery that would give him sight, his life changes in ways he hadn't imagined.
The strength of Sundquist's narrative is his ability to convey the experience of blindness. I am not blind. Neither is Sundquist. But I suspect he spent a lot of time with blind people learning about their lives, experiences, and sensory worlds. When Will gains his sight after the surgery, Sundquist's descriptions of Will's acclimating to sight captivated and moved me.
The weakness of Love and F1rst SIght is that it devolves into a very standard teen love, break up, and reunion story. Of course you want them to get back together, but that last stretch of the book leading up to the reunion is way too unrealistic, irresponsible, and easy for my taste.
Even though it turns into a cheesy love story, Love and F1rst Sight has plenty going for it. Sundquist puts teenagers in a position of evaluating the importance of looks, of popularity, of compassion, of empathy. He seems to present a realistic and thoughtful portrayal of life with a visual disability. I was cheering for Will as he grew out of his insecurities and self-centeredness, and for his friends as they rallied around him.
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