Comment

Sarah1984
Nov 04, 2012Sarah1984 rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
I've given this 3 stars for the fact that some of it was interesting, not because I liked it. The first half of the book was interesting. It was mostly focussed on Helen's blindness and deafness and how she learned to overcome it with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan. There were also a few pages about the obstacles she had to surmount in order to go college. The second half of the book, starting after she wrote of attending college, was written almost as a list of the books she read leading up to the writing of The Story of My Life. Considering the fact that a lot of the books she writes about are not widely read (or even at all) today, the detail she gives us is completely irrelevant to today's reader. Another reviewer said that they were expecting more about what it was like to be both deaf and blind in a time before the technology we have today that could have made her life much easier and more normal. When I read that comment I was ready to argue that her book must be wonderful, simply because a deaf and blind woman wrote it. Since reading the book for the first time since the age of 10, I now agree with that other reviewer. I don't know if it's a characteristic of books written in the early 1900s or if it was published as Helen wrote it and she wouldn't allow it be changed, but it seems to me that this book would never be published today without a complete overhaul by a very tough editor. I found the Wikipedia page about her more enlightening and enjoyable to read.