A Different Life: Growing Up Learning Disabled and Other Adventures

Born with a hole in his heart and suffering from severe illnesses from birth on, author Quinn Bradlee was constantly ill for 14 years until he was finally correctly diagnosed with a rare ailment. This autobiography tells of growing up learning disabled and physically ill, and provides a story of a very different kind of life and perception of the world. General-interest libraries will find his an inspirational, compelling saga.

I was compelled to read this book after seeing Quinn and his mother on The View talking about his journey and this book. Since I have a son with developmental delays, it really hit home. The book did not disappoint. It was an honest, funny, realistic picture painted by Quinn and I enjoyed taking a peek into his life to understand what it's like for him growing up this way. It also gave me some things to consider for my son as well...like how he might feel in certain situations. Thank you, Quinn, for your book!

What a wonderfully written book! I've read many books on learning differences, but none gave me the information this one did, how my child will feel fitting in, in this world. My husband has started to read it and is blown away. When my child is a little older, I will make sure he reads it too. It will validate all those feelings he will have as a teenager and going forward in his life! Great job! Highly recommend this!!

What if your father is Ben Bradlee, your mother's Sally Quinn, and you're stuck with a learning disorder that disrupts even prosaic activities? Never mind growing up to help expose another Watergate or skewer pretentious socialites. Suppose you have trouble understanding most books or face memory problems. Just what to do, especially in a brutal, hierarchical place like Washington, D.C.? In politics and media, the generals and their families are expected to put on a good show for the troops. How to respond? Should your family hide you from the public or gloss over your shortcomings? Luckily the parents of Quinn Bradlee, a plucky 26-year-old born with Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome, let him and a skillful collaborator tell the whole story or at far more than we might have anticipated. Ben Bradlee and wife had apparently envisioned their son writing a buttoned-down book without earthy language--perhaps a respectful look at the boy's ancestors, since Quinn is a genealogy buff. But Quinn and his not-so-hidden ghost wisely avoided this PRish tack. The two paid due tribute to Bradlee and Quinn forebears, but kept in the S word. In fact, they even wrote a scene set on a Caribbean island, Saint Martin, where Quinn loses his virginity to a hooker with skin "as black as the night sky and black curly hair that came down to her shoulder." Quinn's hooker story would be mere titillation by itself; but A Different Life is full of, say, his reflections on women and life in general--naïve in places, but just the same, genuinely his. He does not just share his triumphs at a boarding school for people with disabilities; he also tells of the vicious hazing there. Honesty is the salient trait of this work. What Quinn's story misses in eloquence at times, he more than makes up in credibility of voice. Beyond that, Quinn and collaborator skillfully weave into the book insights on VCFS: how to spot it, how to cope with it, how to accept it. At length they quote Dr. Robert Shprintzen, who, besides having helped Quinn, wrote of the first paper to describe the heart-related syndrome, in 1978. Some 150,000 people here in the U.S. suffer from VCFS, which comes with a whole range of mental and physical complications. Quinn is into film, not traditional journalism; but with the help of his friend, tutor, and ghost, Jeff Himmelman, he appears to have made a solid contribution in the area of health coverage, efforts that go on via a stylish, useful Web site promoted in the book. FriendsOfQuinn.com also educates visitors about other learning disabilities. A Different Life: Growing Up Learning Disabled and Other Adventures, the full title of the book itself, is a clever play on the one for Ben Bradlee's autobiography called A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. Without meaning to slight the father, may I suggest that to many readers, the son's book may be more memorable? The older Bradlee, born into an aristocratic Boston family, suffered from polio and had hi

I am in awe of this young man because he is determined to contribute, to have his life count. Anyone with a learning disability and any parent of a child with a learning disability or VCFS, and anyone who has been insensitive about learning disabilities, should read this book. Its about living well no matter what. Its also shows clearly what its like to have one's brain mix things up. What held me to every page is that the author's reporting of his emotional experience is honest. We meet the real Quinn and the real-time experience of being differently-abled. Its a marvelous book.