Book Review: “The Secret Life of Stories: How Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the way we Read

This book’s greatest strengths and greatest drawbacks are intertwined. For example, rather than focusing on a detailed look at the function of disability in a few texts, Bérubé moves quickly between a huge range books, leaving me with the impression that I don’t fully understand his arguments, but also giving me effectively a reading list for further study.

• The Woman Warrior — Maxine Kingston
• Martian Time-Slip — Philip K Dick
• The Life and Times of Michael K. — Coetzee
• Foe — Coetzee
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
• The Secret Agent — Conrad
• The Speed of Dark — Elizabeth Moon

Even with texts Bérubé mentions that I have read, such as Pale Fire, the Harry Potter series, A Wrinkle in Time, and Don Quixote, I feel like Bérubé’s analyses amount more to abstracts for somebody else’s more detailed reading, than illuminating readings themselves. For one thing, he doesn’t discuss the impact of a disability studies reading on other elements of the text, or on the text overall.

There is also a lot of theory: again both a strength and a drawback. A strength if you have read Mitchell and Snyder, Quayson, Boyd, Zunshine, Kermode, Sedgwick, Shklovsky, Vermeule etc, etc, and want to know how exactly Bérubé’s theory differs from theirs. I, personally, had not previously heard of Evocriticism, so the significant chunks of this book Bérubé devotes to somewhat smugly demonstrating their misguidedness were wasted on me.

Bérubé has something of a know-it-all tone and sense of humor about him. Here is clearly a guy very much at home in academia, who enjoys playing the professorial show-off a bit. This can be slightly condescending/annoying but not egregiously so. Overall, I’m glad I read the book because now I know where to start.