1 of My Stories

Let me just start by saying this book is weird. If you are the type that likes your stories odd, quirky, or just out of the norm, this book is for you. And although this book was in the teen collection, I imagine adults would enjoy it, too. The work is reminiscent of a F. Scott Fitzgerald tale. It's not set in the 1920s, but there is the same feel of magical realism and of characters that don't fit in normal society. It also reminded me of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, OH, because it deals with life in a small town. Sometimes these small, seemingly quaint towns hold the deepest secrets.

The difficulty I have is giving a plot summary. It's one of those books that is really hard to describe. Rather than try to describe the plot, I will just tell you how the book starts. We meet Ivy, our protagonist, when she is seven years old. She tells us that she lives in a small town and that she is often in a drug store where the Rumbaugh twins live and work. We aren'…

So my loyal visitors will remember that a few months ago, I attended a national convention for the blind and visually impaired called the National Federation of the Blind. You can read about my take on this experience here. In any case, attending that convention opened my eyes to how this group of people looks at the world. In many cases, very differently! For example, many people in American are excited about energy-efficient cars. The blind see them as death machines. Because they tend to be silent or quieter than a gasoline-driven car, the blind have trouble hearing these and many blind have been killed or injured.

So, not too long ago a movie came out called Blindness. Keep in mind I haven't seen this movie. In short, the movie is about a place where all people start going blind. The city feels like it could be catching, so they quarantine all the blind people in one prison. As the new people try to deal with their blindness, they begin to act like animals, becoming …