George Estreich - The Shape of the Eye: A Memoir

Praise for The Shape of the Eye

Above all, The Shape of the Eye personalizes Down syndrome, bringing a condition abstracted in the medical literature into the full dimensionality of one familys life.... Increasingly, caregiver stories are included in medical humanities or narrative medicine courses for physicians- and nurses-in-training, in hopes these accounts may acquaint young clinicians more thoroughly with their future patients worlds and with the often messy lives of families who will seek their services. Indeed, I see a place for The Shape ofthe Eye in my classrooms at the University of Virginia.

M ARCIA D AY C HILDRESS, DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS IN HUMANITIES, U NIVERSITY OF V IRGINIA S CHOOL OF M EDICINE

The Shape of the Eye is a story of misunderstanding, devastating pain, and overwhelming challenge. It is also a story of intense bonds between a man and a woman, between parent and child, and between family and community. It is a story of growth and learning. Ultimately it is a story, beautifully written, of loyalty, affection, persistence, and the most important human victory, which is love.

R OBERT M ORGAN, AUTHOR OF Gap Creek

No other writer could have written a book this penetrating and this humane. Estreich brings to his personal story of a familys experience of Down syndrome a poets eye and ear, a historians depth of understanding, a humorists healthy skepticism, and a scientists curiosity. The result is a splendid, stimulating, and extremely moving account of what it means to be a family, what it means to be human.

T RACY D AUGHERTY, AUTHOR OF Just One Catch: A Biography Of Joseph Heller

The Shape of the Eye is a moving memoir that stands with one foot in past and present, immigrant and second-generation, typical and special needsand is about all the slowly dawning understandings that come from those intersections. Its a testament to how a child with Down syndrome and her parents alike learn: just as all children grow toward adulthood with a unique sense of how to adapt, so too do adults grow into their parenthood.

P AUL C OLLINS, AUTHOR OF Not Even Wrong: A Fathers Journey Into The Lost History Of Autism

George Estreichs The Shape of the Eye is a book about the minute details and profound perplexities of our lives, closely observed and compellingly narrated; but more than this, it is a story about being open to the unexpected, about how welcoming a child with Down syndrome leads one to see the world anew. The Shape of the Eye is a richly rewarding bookwitty, reflective, and deeply human.

M ICHAEL B RUB, AUTHOR OF Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, And An Exceptional Child

This is the story of Laura, a girl with Down syndrome who taught a family to love with ordinary perfection and uncommon relevance. Expect to be taken on a journey, too, as Laura asks: Whats most important in your life?

B RIAN S KOTKO, MD , MPP , COAUTHOR OF Common Threads: Celebrating Life WithDown Syndrome

George Estreich artfully and honestlyand often humorouslyexplores how we shape and are shaped by the people closest to us. When hes not digging out from a 9.0 on his Richter scale of diapers, what he discovers is nothing less than a revelation about the nature of love.

M ITCHELL Z UCKOFF, AUTHOR OF Choosing Naia: A Familys Journey

This is a marvelous book. There is an unmistakable air of honesty, authenticity, and humility that underpins the authors writing. For those of us with family members born with Down syndrome, many of Estreichs observations have an unerring veracity.

D AVID W RIGHT, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT M C G ILL U NIVERSITY, H-Net Online

Estreichs gift for writing is extraordinary, his prose wry and evocative. I found myself re-reading many passages, rolling them over in my mind, savoring and absorbing each word.

L ISA M ORGUESS, LITERARYMAMA.COM

Estreich... bring[s] both wry humor and a poets exquisite sensitivity to the meaning and metaphor within hard facts.

J OSEPHINE E NSIGN, Medical Margins BLOG

This is a poignant, beautifully written and intensely moving memoir, and I think only one writer in the world, George Estreich, could possibly have pulled this off. It will become part of the canon of narratives that are studied and taught in medical humanities courses.

A BRAHAM V ERGHESE, AUTHOR OF Cutting For Stone

Estreich writes beautifully, with a poets eye and gift of language, weaving this personal journey into the larger history of his family, exploring the deep and often hidden connections between the past and the present. Engaging and unsentimental, The Shape of the Eye taught me a great deal. It is also a book I couldnt put down, a story I found myself thinking about long after Id finished the final pages.

K IM E DWARDS, AUTHOR OF The Memory Keepers Daughter

The Shape of the Eye is a memoir of a fathers love for his daughter, his struggle to understand her disability, and his journey toward embracing her power and depth. Estreich is raw and honest and draws us each into a new view of what it means to be human and what it means to be different. This book is beautifully written, poetically insightful, and personally transformative.

T IMOTHY P . S HRIVER, P H D , CHAIRMAN AND CEO OF THE S PECIAL O LYMPICS

At every turn [Estreich] finds metaphor where others might see only heartbreak or uncertainty.... He transcends his particular situation to find story, to find meaning and wisdom. Memoir, a genre sometimes maligned as self-indulgent and narcissistic, finds in Estreich a practitioner who brings deserved dignity to the form.

M ADELEINE B LAIS, AUTHOR OF In These Girls, Hope Is A Muscle. F ROM THE JUDGES CITATION FOR THE 2012 O REGON B OOK A WARD IN C REATIVE N ONFICTION

JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN

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Southern Methodist University Press hardcover edition: March 2011

Tarcher/Penguin trade paperback edition: April 2013

Copyright 2011, 2013 by George Estreich

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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ISBN 978-1-101-61002-2

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