17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One Family's Courage in the Face of a Mystifying Diagnosis, January 6, 2000
I love "A Slant of Sun," a first book by Beth Kephart, a memoir for her nine-year-old son Jeremy. This book is about everything that matters in relationships, whether son and mother, husband and wife, friends. It's about acceptance and compassion and anger and courage. It's about stripping life down to its essentials to find out what the essentials are. What does it matter if your son has good manners or a sensible bedtime if he has not, in the course of his young life, found the words, any words, that will order the rest of his life? I love you, Mommy. I want cereal. I want to play.
Diagnosed at age two with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, Jeremy had obsessions and rituals and fears and no language to express his need for them. He loved cars and arranging them in precise, unvarying patterns. He was terrified of strangers, of any disruption in his day. The picture on the cover of the book is of Jeremy, alone and facing the world from his front porch, wearing the too-big green hat that for a time was his equivalent of Dorothy's ruby slippers, a bit of protection, a hedged bet against a world that wanted him to be like other kids. And a badge, too, that said, "I'm not like other kids. I hope I find my way, but it will be my way."
In fact, that's how it was. Today, he is on the verge of third grade, a move forward that, like all new things, has him a little nervous. "I know," he confides to his mother, "that I'm not good at transitions." He agreed to having a bunch of strangers in his house for a party in honor of the publication of the book for which he was the inspiration and the hero as long as he could leave and play soccer in the backyard when he felt like it. He not only held his own, he held forth.
I know because I was there. I met Kephart through her bread and butter work as a freelance business writer. I met Jeremy when I learned that his diagnosis was the same as the one pinned on my sister's child, who is three years younger than Jeremy and who, like Jeremy, is gifted in many ways and has eyes you could drown in. I hoped, like everyone who loves a child and sees him suffering, for a prescription. That is not what I found, either in knowing Jeremy or in reading the book about him. I found, as another reviewer has noted, "an extended poem" about the healing power of love. That, ultimately, is what makes this book worth reading.
Jeremy's extraordinary progress through his disorder is, implacably, his story and his alone. The disorder is too broad for it to be otherwise. Kephart - though she knows the science of PDDNOS and autism well enough to be asked to lecture at Johns Hopkins - is as bewildered as anyone. She writes, "It seems to me that the stronger Jeremy grows, the more confounding becomes the incipient question: Just what has happened here? Five years ago we saw our child disappearing - a rapid descent into silence. We met with doctors. We were given terminology. The terminology was a dark room, a dead end....Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified is a label extended to tens of thousands of children....It's an active search on the Internet. But it remains, in my mind, nothing more than a cipher, a way of saying, "We are not quite sure what's wrong."
What is universal, and right, in "Slant" and what Kephart expresses with honesty and exquisite language is the maddening collaboration of heartbreak, joy, rage, and simple sweetness that defines love -- whether you're a small boy demanding that the world take you green hat and all or a mother faced with diagnoses, haunted by imagined inadequacies, exhausted with daily and alternating frustration and progress, cognizant of prices to be paid if this road is taken over that road, and utterly charmed, still, by the hat. "On all the [hat] trees, on all the branches, among all those dozens of leaves, there could not be a more controversial choice," she writes.
"A Slant of Sun" is the real deal. It's a compelling story, compellingly told. It will hold up to the light.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Slant of Sun, January 28, 2000
A Slant of Sun, is the beautifully written story of one boy's triumph over a diagnosis of "pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified". Authored by his mother, Beth Kephart, we are taken on a journey through the heartaches, frustrations and joys of their relationship to each other and to the world. Ms. Kephart eloquently brings to our awareness the fact that each child is unique and that each parent has the opportunity to alter the course of a life by his or her willingness to challenge conventional thinking. Through the author's determination and love for her son and by Jeremy's strength, she guides and supports him in his courageous struggle. Ms. Kephart has the unique ability to bare her soul while maintaining the book's focus on her son and his day-by-day victories. For any one who has ever loved a child, A Slant of Sun promises to engross you with its depth, honesty and bravery.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a beautiful, engrossing book, August 9, 2000
Beth Kephart writes very well. I was totally hooked on this book after reading only a few pages. She is both a fierce advocate for her son and an interesting analyst of his difficulties. She takes us through her own journey and that of her son, from the first suspicions that something is wrong, through the struggle for a diagnosis, through the therapy and her realization that sometimes she ought to trust her instincts about her son more than the opinions of the experts. Though my own child does not suffer from any of Jeremy's problems, I gained considerable insight about parenting from this book.
You are likely to find this story fascinating whether you have any children or not.
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