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Cockeyed: A Memoir
 
 

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Cockeyed: A Memoir (Hardcover)

by Ryan Knighton (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Atlantic Books (11 Jan 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1843545624
  • ISBN-13: 978-1843545620
  • Product Dimensions: 18.8 x 14.2 x 3.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 541,463 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review
"* 'Engaging and insightful, literally shedding light on a dark and misunderstood condition.' Kirkus Review (Starred) * 'Hilarious and unsentimental-yet-moving memoir...this book is a way to see life through another lens, an invitation to take a journey that no reader should refuse.' (starred) Publishers Weekly"

The Financial Times,3 February 2007
Engaging and irreverent. Knighton is brave, witty and shameless.
The reader ends with nothing but respect and admiration for [him]...
Learning to count one's blessings need not always be a somber lesson -
Knighton makes it a pleasure.

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4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Shows the full compliment of human emotions..., 5 Sep 2008
By Snapdragon (London) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Cockeyed: A Memoir (Paperback)
When he was 18 Ryan Knighton was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa; which means he had night-blindness and tunnel vision before becoming completely blind. In `Cockeyed', Knighton explains about how this condition (and the realisation that he would lose his sight) affected his life and relationships to others. Far from being worthy and heavy going, he does this with a lightness of touch and a great deal of humour as well as occasional disbelief at the fact that he tried to carry on as if nothing was happening (and nearly killing himself in the process!) He drove for a full thirteen months between realising that something was wrong and getting his diagnosis, using cat's eye's to place himself on the road; `At night I drove Braille. Doesn't everybody?'

Knighton has a terrific way of explaining what he could see (describing tunnel vision as a dart board where you can only see the outside edge and the bull's eye.) He also gives a string of amusing anecdotes, including times when he has been happily dreaming to himself without giving thought to how he appears to others; `I inadvertently enter into a staring contest with strangers who, unaware of my blindness, peg me for either an apprenticing hypnotist, a vacant psychopath, or, worse, a poorly socialised lech.'

One of the most moving chapters deals with the premature death of his brother, in which he shows how losing someone can make us change our attitudes, and better still he manages this without ever slipping into cloying sentimentality.
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3.0 out of 5 stars blind testosterone., 12 April 2007
By Leabhar (Scotland) - See all my reviews
As the title should tell you, Ryan Knighton tells his story in a boisterous and irreverent style, and it works beautifully to convey the classic farce of his tales on honeymoon in a Polish salt mine, or applying with trepidation for 'Gimp camp'. There is an awful lot of high quality humour in Cockeyed. It has to be said, though, that this same style sometimes becomes a weakness rather than a strength, most unfortunately at the very beginning. I just wasn't warming to the teenage machismo of the first few pages and the west-coast Canada colloquiallisms were a real barrier, causing me to throw the book down several times crying "what the hell does this sentence mean!?" Two other readers I know were just as frustrated at these first pages, so some revisions for a British edition might have saved less dogged readers from missing the book's rewards. But as Knighton warms to himself you warm to him too. Whether you have 20-20 vision or sight loss you'll learn something here - how (and why) do you conceal your blindness to hold down a job in Korea; what defines a community and why there's a deaf community but no such thing as a blind one; how independent can your sighted partner be; and just how ingeniously deft a device that simple white stick can be. You'll find your own intriguing nuggets. The blurb about mising the poignant and the knockabout funny is spot on - and poignant, for once, doesn't mean apple-pie mawkishness. Knighton's self-discovery is no new-age gush. This is clearly a first book - but if Knighton can take to heart his own words at the foot of page 260, and realise he's got my attention and doesn't need to keep jumping up and down ["...loud noises clutter and impede intimacy...All this bombastic competition for my ears. It pries me from the person with whom I'm speaking"] then I'll certainly be looking forward to reading what else he's got to say. Give it a go.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating........... highly recommended, 7 Feb 2007
By R. Cunningham (Essex, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Cockeyed: A Memoir of Blindness (Hardcover)
As a close friend of someone who also has Retinitis Pigmentosa, the same condition as Ryan Knighton this book was enlightening, amusing and left me hooting with laughter and crying in the same chapter.

I couldn't put it down.
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4.0 out of 5 stars IN THE WORLD OF THE BLIND, THE ONE-EYED MAN IS KING...
This is an engaging memoir of an intelligent, articulate man who happens to be blind. As a teenager, the author developed the degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, which... Read more
Published on 3 Jun 2007 by Lawyeraau

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