Of Such Small Differences (Magill Book Reviews)

Joanne Greenberg, author of I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN and numerous other stories, here creates a hauntingly perceptive and poetic tour de force that proves her one of America’s best storytellers. Entering John Moon’s life is to enter a world of synesthesia, unexpectedly abrupt accidents, inexplicable abandonments, and ceaseless quests into unknown areas which may be mapped only by stepping carefully through endlessly dark silence.

Blind at birth and permanently deafened at age nine by his drunken father, John is twenty-six, lives alone in a Denver apartment, and works at “the workshop” when the story begins. He is also a poet, earning money for his poems that are printed on Handicards and sold to hearing-sighted people, Trapped more by the expectations of those around him than by his own physical limitations, John finds his life “continually being defined and interpreted to him because direct experience was too perilous to dare.” Likewise, his publisher wants only poems which de-emphasize human differences and speak of life from the perspective of a hearing-sighted person; thus John derives poems from stories he has read in Braille by such writers as Herman Melville and Charles Dickens.

Falling in love with Leda, a hearing-sighted actress, changes John’s life and poetry profoundly. Yet there are complications: John’s deaf-blind friends warn him against the relationship, his family thinks Leda is using him, and Leda’s friends think John is using her. John’s triumphs in overcoming obstacles in the material world are extended here into triumphs of the heart over mental constructs that often darken rather than illuminate human potential.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXIV, June 15, 1988, p. 1689.

Chicago Tribune. October 30, 1988, XIV, p. 5.

Kirkus Reviews. LVI, July 1, 1988, p. 921.

Library Journal. CXIII, October 1, 1988, p. 101.

The New York Times. CXXXVIII, October 3, 1988, p. C25.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIII, October 30, 1988, p. 12.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIV, September 23, 1988, p. 50.