Blind

The novel Blind, by Rachel DeWoskin, actually took me quite a while to read. Maybe it was because I was busy with school and work and life, or maybe the story didn't progress as fast as I wish it would have. However, I still really liked the novel - the author took time to develop all of the characters really well and while the plot was a bit broad, was well put together.

We enter Emma's life a year after she went blind from a fireworks accident in her tiny, nothing-bad-happens town. She was the talk of town for the entire year, as she struggled to relearn how to live her life without being able to see anything. She had to switch schools to a school for the blind, that focused more on how to do certain things that come easily to sighted people than focusing purely on schoolwork. Emma hated it there, and her main goal was to make it back to "normal" public high school. And as we enter Emma's story, she is ready to start her first day back to "normal" high school. She has her dog Spark by her side, a paraprofessional to help her out and her best friend Logan to help her. Things are different though still, she has to read in braille, and her para has to tell her what the teacher is writing on the board so that Emma knows what is going on. But Emma is getting by, until another huge event rocks her tiny nothing-bad-happens town. A teenager in the community goes missing, and soon turns up dead at the lake. What was a kidnapping situation is now clearly a suicide situation, and the town struggled to understand.

The rest of the novel really focuses on the kids of the town coming together at an old abandoned village to talk about Claire, the girl who committed suicide, and try to come to terms with it. They meet often, at night, and while fights are common, they're all there for each other to try and understand the tragedy that shook their already fragile town.

I feel the author did a really good job of developing the characters in this novel  - Emma comes from a large family, yet I felt I got to know each and every one of her siblings on a more personal level. We get to see how Emma interacts with different people, from her mom who blames herself and thinks hovering will stop anything else bad from happening to her twin sisters who are polar opposites. We learn about the mistake Emma made at her blind school with her friends she was developing there, and how she works to recorrect her wrongdoings towards the end of the novel.

This is a coming of age novel as Emma rediscovers and redefines herself as someone who is blind, a teenager who is blind and quickly approaching adulthood.

Probably my favorite part of Emma's story was her development of synesthesia, or the ability to hear words as colors. Each word or voice that Emma heard translated into a different color or scene in her mind. This disorder actually exists, and I really enjoyed the author delving into this disorder that is often not talked about.

DeWoskin did a really good job with wrapping up this novel, and her use of descriptive words and strong characters really enhanced this novel. It was amazing to me how well I could envision the scenes of everything, since Emma couldn't describe for herself what she could see! Emma had to rely on everyone else to tell her what was going on, if she couldn't depend on her other senses to let her know.