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Amazon.co.uk Review
Kuusisto was a premature baby, with under-developed retinas that were then scarred by an over- oxygenated incubator. Aged three he hid his first pair of glasses under the leaves of a rhubarb plant; through his 20s he was still riding a bicycle, by making his head "tilt towards the light". Rather than be pigeon-holed by society he resolutely remained in the darkness of the closet, emerging only to collide with the world. It took a state of unemployed depression for him finally to grasp a cane--a "divining rod", as he puts it--and, the door unlatched, he trains for a dog, Corky, who provides a confidence and lease of life that he had denied himself for so long.
Kuusisto's unflinching prose sparkles with the grace of the poet he also is and time after time he wields phrases that thrill in their unexpected beauty. As an account of coming to terms with vision impairment it is brutally honest and searching; as a debut literary offering it bristles with a darkly original talent that refuses to be hidden under the rhubarb. --David Vincent
Product Description
A haunting, brilliantly imagined memoir about coming to terms with near-blindness, this is the story of a 'lost man with a speck of something like seeing.' Born prematurely, Stephen Kuusisto has been fractionally sighted since a post-natal operation severely damaged his retinas. Yet he grew up pretending he could see. Planet of the Blind tells his story - the years of a lonely childhood spent behind bottle-lens glasses, the consuming fear of ridicule and derision, the struggle through college that brings him from obesity to anorexia. With his nose pressed into the spine of a book in furious attempts to read, riding a bicycle at insane speeds, never truly knowing the face of his first lover, he stumbles through half a lifetime enraged and mortified.
This is the record of a handicapped life; but it is also an extraordinary literary achievement. Kuusisto has managed to translate his opaque, kaleidoscopic world of shape and colour into poetic and luminous prose. Planet of the Blind conveys life as it is lived by one whose visual impressions are 'at once beautiful and largely useless', and for whom normality is continuously transformed by his blindness into an intense aesthetic experience.
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Customer Reviews
The introduction of Kuusisto to his guide dog, Corky, is very emotional (and I have to admit I did have a little cry here). The bleakness of his condition gives way to this optimistic future with his dog, so despite Planet of The Blind being an unhappy story during much of its pages, it ends on a deserved happy ending.
A simple, easy to read book which really has something to say.
The book goes through Stephens life from a child not accepting his blindness through to adulthood. When after an unfortunate accident with his eyes,he finally gives in to using a white cane and then eventually gets his guide dog Corky.
Although the book took a while to get to his acceptance of been blind. When he did get his guide dog, you feel his life has just begun.
This is a book where Stephen makes my job worth while as he acknowledges what puppy walkers do to help in the upbringing in these wonderful dogs. For that i thank you Stephen Kuusisto.
An immensely moving, spiritually rich search for self-acceptance.
You would have to be a cold concrete block not to be moved to tears when he meets his seeing-eye dog, Corky - friend, companion.
One of the most endearing reads my eyes have ever graced.
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