Will & I
A Memoir
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Clay Byars was recovering at home from a near-fatal car crash when he suffered a massive stroke. He was just eighteen years old. He awoke, back in the hospital, and was told he would be paralyzed from the eyes down for the rest of his life.
Determined to defy the odds, Clay quickly and miraculously began to recover his mobility but discovered just how different his life would be—a disparity embodied by his identical twin brother, Will. As Will went on to graduate from college, marry, and start a family, Clay carved out a unique existence, doing the seemingly impossible by living on his own on a remote farm in Alabama.
With haunting clarity and heartrending honesty, Will & I tells the unlikely story of Clay’s life and his coping mechanisms, including weekly singing lessons that not only teach him to use his voice but remind him of his will to exist. In this singular and striking meditation on vulnerability and vitality, we’re invited to see how Clay sees the world—and how the world sees him—as he bravely challenges himself and his abilities at every turn.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this memoir of suffering and recovery, Narrative editor Byars recounts his struggle to master a body shattered by tragedy. As a college sophomore, Byars was severely injured in a car accident. Botched surgery led to a massive brain-stem stroke, leaving Byars quadriplegic. Resisting the diagnosis, he gradually recovered the use of his limbs, though he continued to suffer physical deficits. For Byars, reconstructing himself as a social being was equally difficult, especially in comparison to his uninjured identical twin, Will. Writing became central to Byars's creation of a new identity, even as Will married and started a family. Byars describes his losses and slow progress in succinct, unsentimental prose. The most striking feature of the memoir is his emotional distance. Even Will, his genetic double, plays only an occasional role in Byars's narrative. In an intriguing stylistic choice, Byars blends past-tense narration of his accident and aftermath with present-tense descriptions of life on an isolated rural property. Byars's minimalist approach and his remove make for a fascinating, if chilling, meditation on the aftermath of trauma. The themes that appear in the final chapter would have benefited from earlier development, but they provide a remarkable conclusion to his long calvary.