Scan barcode
A review by boggremlin
I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir by Jan Grue
3.0
Jan Grue is a Norwegian professor and author who was born with a spinal muscular disorder, and he writes movingly about the body and his place in society as a person using a wheelchair. It's interesting to consider how Grue's life (and his full participation in what might be called "normal" life) is aided and abetted by being from Norway, with its strong social systems. But Grue has travelled widely, studying abroad in numerous countries, and is insightful about how his life was shaped by his parents' willingness to support him, and how his disability still allows him degrees of freedom.
His writing was most understandable to me in the latter third of the memoir, when he recollects the birth of his son. The way Grue wrote about grief (for the body he does and does not have, for the life he lives and did not live) and about how he understood his own personhood after meeting his son and realizing that whatever dreams he had had for the unborn baby were now replaced by the person his newborn already was, was incredibly resonant. Especially in the context of his own medical case notes, which are interspersed throughout the text. These are records of his disability, but they aren't the defining characteristic of Grue as a person. "You were just Jan," Grue's parents tell him, and as Grue and his wife settle into parenthood, he begins to understand that statement.
His writing was most understandable to me in the latter third of the memoir, when he recollects the birth of his son. The way Grue wrote about grief (for the body he does and does not have, for the life he lives and did not live) and about how he understood his own personhood after meeting his son and realizing that whatever dreams he had had for the unborn baby were now replaced by the person his newborn already was, was incredibly resonant. Especially in the context of his own medical case notes, which are interspersed throughout the text. These are records of his disability, but they aren't the defining characteristic of Grue as a person. "You were just Jan," Grue's parents tell him, and as Grue and his wife settle into parenthood, he begins to understand that statement.