Customer Reviews

Tumbling After: Pedaling Like Crazy After Life Goes Downhill

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tumbling After is the story of how a woman copes after her husband suffers a devastating injury. But it's also the story of a remarkable woman who builds a remarkable family and not only lives on, but thrives. This book is proof: we all have strength and creativity within us that may not make itself evident until we need it. It's also proof that Susan Parker is a gifted writer. The pages sing with laughter as well as pathos. The book will make you rejoice in Susan's humanity, and your own.

I saw Suzy Parker at a book reading in Seattle and she said, "One thing you learn being in the disabled community is that there is always someone worse off than you." And she shows us some of these people--with a clear eye and a sense of humor. What I really love about her story is its truth. There is no self-pity. Even when she says "this [stinks], I wonder if I can make," she just plows ahead.

The story is accessible and never maudlin even when it is grim. And there is plenty of humor and adventure to pull the reader through the tight little chapters.

This story is the real deal--a great read, a compelling story, and a few lessons along the way.

I was totally captivated by this book, which will stay with me. Susan's Parker life was turned upside down when her husband had a bad accident which paralyzed him from the shoulders down. This book is vignettes of her life since. Her writing reminds me of funny adventure travel writers like Tim Cahill, Pico Iyer, Bill Bryson and Doug Lansky. Her journey is not to a foreign land, but her life with a quadraplegic in Oakland, might as well be. Her description of how she built and found a new life is captivating, funny and moving.

I picked this book up with about 15 others from the new non-fiction section at my library in preparation vacation reading. I got through my entire selection, but this is the one book that, in a truly meaningful way, became part of my consciousness. I then had the opportunity to choose a book for my bookclub, and it was a no-brainer: Tumbling After. I think the book just speaks to a place in one's heart.

Although at times I wanted to shake Suzy Parker, there was never a time in the book where I couldn't relate in some way to her. Since none of us know what lies ahead in life, we can all imagine ourselves in Suzy Parker's shoes, and I would hope that I would handle any situation of the same magnitude with similar grace, honesty, and humanity. When white, middle class Suzy finds herself in the position of forming a "new family" with folks whose background and lifestyle were formerly not even on her radar, it proves beyond doubt that "love is thicker than blood". She faces up to her biases very bravely, and finds true friendship and camraderie.

Lastly, but just as importantly, I laughed hysterically throughout, which was hard to explain to family members who inquired of the subject matter of such an apparently funny book (quadraplegia? - huh?). But I just loved Suzy Parker's soul.

Told with deadpan humor, Suzy Parker relates the story of her life after her husband's near-fatal bike accident. While it is Ralph's accident that is the catalyst for the change in their lives, this is the story of Susan Parker.

After the accident, the plans for an athletic retirement are replaced with endless trips to doctors, pharmacies, and the never-ending routine of caring for a quadriplegic. Many of their old friends offer advice but not much else, other fade away entirely. As the family being to sink into despair, new friends and associates come to help her adjust to the new lifestyle. Susan freely admits that many of these people are not the type of people she has ever known much about before nor would she have ever chosen to associate with had she not left the privileged world of the white upper-classes.

I found this book to be full of funny anecdotes that were well told. Ms. Parker tells her story with as much humor as possible and a great deal of candor. It is a quick read and well worth your time.

Susan Parker's memoir of her husband, Ralph's accident and it's aftermath is the best thing I've read this year. It's funny, sad, shocking, and completly compelling. This is a book I couldn't put down and continue to think about. I want to know more about these people!

I cried, I laughed, I sighed and then I laughed and cried again. I picked this book up and could not put it down. I thought the book gut wrenching. A literary friend of mine to whom I sent the book said "What a wonderful book you sent me, what a searing story." Susan Parker has written a wonderful book of life and dreams gone astray and picking up the pieces after.

The cover of Susan Park's "Tumbling After"calls it a memoir and, of course, it is. But much more, it's a love story, a unique story that couldn't have happened in any other environment, among a different kind of people, nor would it have been written by any one else. It is a story of personal growth, the erasing of prejudice, a new portrait of neighborhood, family and the meaning of love in all its forms and all its unexpected sources. As well as the many shapes of heroism that develop as disaster is taken in stride. Suzy writes with the brevity of a practiced columnist, but this is not a collection of her newspaper columns. The language, the sexuality, the emotion is candid, honest and unrestrained. It's an account of what is, and what is is there to be embraced.

Suzy's athletic husband Ralph becomes a quadriplegic in a bike accident. His every need requires help, day and night. There is no hope for recovery, but his life is not hopeless. The reader gets the sense that something good is going to happen even though it's clear that Ralph's physical condition wont change. There is no lecture, no attempt to show bravery, no lesson consciously taught. Yet the reader feels as though he or she is a better person for having read Tumbling After.

Once into this book, you may promise yourself to read just one more "column," before putting it down. Then just one more and just one more, page, until you get to the end. Each brief "story" leads to the next until the last. I couldn't wait to get to the end, and then I was sorry this rare reading experience was over.

Heartily recommended to anyone who thinks that life is tough.

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I was totally captivated by this book, which will stay with me. Susan's Parker life was turned upside down when her husband had a bad accident which paralyzed him from the shoulders down. This book is vignettes of her life since. Her writing reminds me of funny adventure travel writers like Tim Cahill, Pico Iyer, Bill Bryson and Doug Lansky. Her journey is not to a foreign land, but might as well be. Her description of how she built and found a new life is captivating, funny and moving.

I disagree with many of the reviews. I found the tone of the book to be somewhat self-pitying and monotonous. Strangely, the only review here I seem to agree with was written below by the wife of another quadiplegic.

The most interesting aspect about this topic, the devastating accident and its immediate aftermath, are glossed over quickly in the first few pages. The remainder of the book is the author going, "Woe is me, look how my life has deteriorated." Don't get me wrong, I don't think I could have handled what she went through, but the book makes the wife more of a victim than the husband.

There is nothing in the book about the husband's initial reaction to waking up and learning he was paralyzed after such an active life; virtually nothing about how he coped with the injury psychologically.

One problem with this book is that the author tells the whole story from the standpoint of me, me, me. I understand how hard her life must have become in the wake of her husband's devastating accident, but I had a real problem with the fact that, according to the book, for the most part, the author parked her formerly active husband in the living room in front of the television like a potted plant and pretty much left him there.

There is very little interaction described between the author and her disabled husband. The author goes on and on about how wonderful her husband's caretakers are, but treats the quadriplegic husband as a two dimensional burden. For example, Ms. Parker will describe in great detail some conversation or interaction she had with one of her husband's attendants, and then she throws in something like, "and we gave Ralph a sleeping pill, emptied his urine bag, put him to bed, and then [the attendant] took me upstairs and made love to me tenderly." I am no prude, and I understand the woman has needs, but I found the whole thing horrifying and insensitive.

She parks the husband in a hospital bed in the living room, and then spends the next few years sharing a bed and sex life upstairs with his 60-year old care attendant. When the husband says he does not want to know how she satisfies herself sexually, she tells him anyway, saying telling him would make HER feel better. Who knows how the poor husband felt. He could hardly complain, since he is helpless without both the wife and the attendant.

She says her old friends and life "dropped away," after the accident, leaving as her only social life, an odd assortment of lovable misfits that took care of her husband. The book gives the impression that, if one is rendered disabled, their only social life is going to be with their ex-con, ex-drug addict hired attendant [who also services the author sexually for years] and assorted neighbors.

I did not find the book uplifing. I found it completely depressing. Usually when I love a book, I am sad when I finish it. This one I was glad to put down. If you want an inspiring book by or about dealing with quadriplegia and its aftermath, I highly recommend "Eleven Seconds" by Travis Roy [the former hockey player]; "Still Me," by Christopher Reeve; or "Miracles Happen" by Brooke and Jean Ellison.