Publishers Weekly - April 10th issue

STARRED REVIEW
Cockeyed: A Memoir

Knighton, who teaches at Capilano College in Vancouver, started going blind in his teens, and in this hilarious and unsentimental-yet-moving memoir, he tells what it was like to lose his eyesight. He was born in the 1970s, grew up in British Columbia, and by 1987 was showing signs of poor vision. He began losing his sight early enough that the timeframes of his coming-of-age and his coming-of-blindness overlap. Milestones such as his first driving experiences and his first relationships with girls that would have been ordinary for other teenagers were anything but for him. As he moved into adulthood, he also moved further into sightlessness, yet he turns the story into something so bracing and unmawkish that it reads like a travelogue—you can't wait to know where he's going next, whether it's to attend college in Vancouver, teach English in South Korea, or get married. Wit can be a weapon, but can also be a kind of walking stick; being so gifted clearly guided Knighton long before anything began to happen to his eyes. Luckily for his readers, he was also gifted with a different kind of care and clear-sightedness, never stumbling into the maudlin. The book is a way to see life through another lens, an invitation to take a journey that no reader should refuse. (June)


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