Stuck in Neutral

Shawn is a vegetable to the outside world, a young man unable to more his eyes, stuck in a wheelchair, unable to communicate anything about his life. His Dad worries that Shawn is in pain, that he suffers terribly when he is overcome by seizures. The reader is the only one with insight into Shawn's inner world-his iron-clad memory, his acute observations about personal relationships, his appreciation of girls, and his wisdom about his family and special education class. Does Shawn's Dad think that ending his son's life would end some unbearable pain? I've heard others talk about the dark overtones of this book. Certainly being severely disabled and misunderstood is dark, but Shawn's narrative voice carried me through the book. He has inner strength which buoys the reader through his own tough times. In many ways, I am envious of the personal acceptance and wisdom of our 14-year old narrator. Here's one terrific passage from [p. 41]. "I use the word `retard' the way I use any word or words: dolphin, racehorse, sandwich, sidewalk, and apple. Is a dolphin better than a racehorse? A sandwich better than a sidewalk? An apple better than whatever? Words just stand for things they are and for what people mean them to stand for. A retard is not a normal persona. Putting us in baseball caps and Reebok high-tops and teaching us to connect bolt A to nut B, to count back change, to stack plastic-covered packages of pork chops, none of these things will make us normal." This is one of those books I plan to buy a few copies of to pass out to friends. It's a slim book that packs a powerful message (and not in a sad way).

I don't normally allow myself to read books like this. Some parts of it were too close to home. I am severely disabled, although not as severely disabled as the main character of this book, and I have survived an attempted murder that was disability-related in nature. I have at times been unable to move at all, with no way to let anyone know anything about myself, although obviously not permanently. I was afraid that this book would be all about how the father was right in his intentions. I was wrong. I loved the parts of the book that were about people's reactions to the main character. Those were realistic. I get called a retard a lot, and patronized, and I feel just the same about the word "retard" as the main character does. I liked that they pointed out how much money his father was making off of his feelings about having a disabled son. That kind of exploitation of us is rarely questioned. The fact that the main character was not constantly feeling awful is also realistic, and not something I expected a non-disabled author to understand. Generally our suffering is overestimated by those around us, even when we are in pain. I am not sure whether I would have been able to understand, if my parents ever decided to kill me. There were a lot of things they did in the name of love and helping, without knowing any better, that I have come to understand, but not accept. Death is more final than anything, right or wrong, they ever did. I am not sure I would be able to contemplate that, and I am glad my parents never considered it even when I was not expected to amount to anything. I have never been able to work out any good intentions in the people who did try to kill me. But the real reason I enjoyed the book so much was the description of the well-meaning but clueless non-disabled people around him. Those were spot on, I could have imagined them happening to me as well. And they were funny in a twisted sort of way. Even the poem written by the main character's father is familiar in an odd way, in scraps of writing I accidentally ran across once written by my own parents, writing I was never meant to see. The ending was unsettling and scary. I wish it was less uncertain, but maybe it's meant to ask the question, "Does his father really understand him or not, does his father really love him or not?" A question that he, in the book, has no answer to. One thing I did not like was the implication that if he understood less, it might be more okay to kill him. There have been times in my life when I have not understood a whole lot, not in conventional ways, and from experience I can say that they are not necessarily awful suffering any more than immobility is necessarily awful suffering. Nor is it death to lack understanding of your surroundings, it is just a very different way of being. The book, taking pains to make sure we knew the main character was highly gifted and perceptive, did not entirely cover that. Despite the fa

"Stuck In Neutral" By Terry Trueman was a very wonderful book. In it, you read about the life of a mentally and physically challenged teenage boy, Sean, through his eyes, and see things from his point of view and what he thinks of those things in his life. It is also about the knowledge of how his Dad really thinks Sean's "pain" should end which adds mystery to the story. It makes you feel that you know exactly what a person of his nature thinks and feels in this story even though no one really knows exactly. This is one of those books you will not be able to put down. This story has given me a different feeling about persons with disabilities.

Rather than focus on what was said in the pages of Stuck in Neutral I want us to examine the heart of the author. Trueman doesn't gloss over the bitter rock hard reality of life. He wants us to get real with our feelings, to lay bare our fears, our frustrations, to tell it like it is, speak the truth. Trueman did the same thing with his narrative poem Sheehan (the precursor to Stuck in Neutral), laying bare his vulnerability, daring to say what none of the rest of us would even dream of voicing to another, let alone print it in a book for the whole world to see. He has done the same with Stuck in Neutral.If you have read other reviews on this story you should know by now that Trueman is actually the father of such a child. Shawn is a severely mentally disabled victim of Cerebral Palsy. Or is he? That is the question. However, this isn't "just" a story written in the voice of a helpless child trapped in an uncontrollable body; and neither is it "just" an attempt by the author to help the world to see through the eyes of the disabled. Both of those are indeed very worthy endeavors, especially by the father of such a child; but this story goes much deeper. Behind the pages of this story you will find a father who has been torn to shreds by circumstances beyond his control and still managed to come out on the other end a winner. And not just a winner because he managed to survive, but because he has done something for his son that nobody else on this whole earth could have done, not the medical doctors, not the psychiatrists and not the innumerable therapists who tried to help. His love for this child is what enabled him to place himself inside Shawn's body, to mingle with his mind and muscles, to see through his eyes and create in him a whole new person from the inside out, by the power of the written word. Trueman brought his son back to life. That is the real miracle of this story. Please keep that in mind as you read the last few paragraphs and then you won't have to wonder about the outcome. ELE.