{"id":1752,"date":"2015-07-03T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/?p=1752"},"modified":"2020-12-01T14:26:32","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T14:26:32","slug":"review-far-from-you-by-tess-sharpe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/2015\/07\/03\/review-far-from-you-by-tess-sharpe\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Far From You<\/i> by Tess Sharpe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Far From You<\/em><\/a> is a noir murder mystery. It\u2019s a bisexual coming-of-age love triangle. It\u2019s a portrait of an adolescent girl coming to terms with a permanent physical disability resulting from a car crash. It\u2019s a story about friendship and belonging in a conservative rural California town. It\u2019s a story about addiction and recovery. It\u2019s a compassionately told family drama. It\u2019s all of these things overlapping simultaneously. As readers we are drawn into the complex\u00a0onrush, and guided by Tess Sharpe\u2019s unflinching hand.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>\t\n\t
\n\t\t\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tBUY ON BOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t\tBOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& support independent bookstores\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/article> \n\n\t<\/center><\/div>Growing up with a physical disability that required multiple surgeries, the insertion of metal spare parts where wrecked bone used to be, and the use of an ever-changing armory of mobility aides, I felt a strong connection to Sophie, Sharpe\u2019s bold heroine. Despite the different underlying causes of our disabilities \u2014 Sophie is in a car crash at the age of 14, whereas I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis at 18 months \u2014 Sophie\u2019s coping mechanisms and emotional outlook surrounding her disability rang true to my lived experience. Perhaps even more of a selling point for the novel is the rich and complex way that Sharpe paints Sophie as a complex young person who is uncovering multiple facets of her identity. Sophie does this as it happens for so many adolescents: chaotically, and all at once.<\/p>\n

As a person who has spent more than her fair share of time searching for nuanced disabled characters \u00a0in both fiction and nonfiction, this messy portrayal is the greatest strength in a novel that includes many\u00a0features to recommend it. Too often, disability is portrayed in a void, put up for view as a curated exhibition for curious onlookers, rather than being fully rendered as what it is: just another way to travel through life.<\/p>\n

They change depending on her mood, the circumstances that she finds herself in, and her attitude evolves throughout the novel based on the length of time\u00a0since the accident. Most importantly, the focus on her disability fades in and out depending on its importance in a given situation.\u00a0 When she is fleeing for her life in the middle of the night, she is more aware of her limitations than when she is at a party with friends. This seems like a silly detail to point out, but I have read far too many books with disabled characters in which the writer fails to make this shift of focus. The world is awash with disability narratives where the disability is described so fiercely that all other aspects of the character are drowned out. \u00a0Sharpe uses great restraint in allowing Sophie the space to breathe as a fully realized character without ignoring, or miraculously healing, her disability.<\/p>\n

Sophie\u2019s sexuality, in a world that too often demands asexuality of people with disabilities, is complicated. She is in love with Mina, her best friend, and a little bit in love with Trev, her best friends\u2019 brother. Furthermore, she \u2014 in very tasteful scenes \u2014 actually has sex. Sex that \u2014 at least with Mina \u2014 starts off with her disabled leg twisting uncomfortably, but very quickly resolves into a sensitive scene about a pair of young people in love.<\/p>\n

Far From You<\/em> is not perfect. From the perspective of a writer and a lover of mysteries, Sophie\u2019s addiction to Oxycontin felt organic, was perfectly placed, crucial for her development as a character, and necessary to the plot of the novel. From the perspective of a person with a disability that has on more than one occasion required the use of narcotics for pain management, her addiction was problematic. Unfortunately, this addiction reinforces the cultural bias that to use narcotics for the treatment of pain \u2014 as prescribed by a doctor \u2014 is to open yourself up to the slippery slope to addiction. This is not the case. Unfortunately this belief is so ingrained in our society that it has stigmatized pain management practices. \u00a0Due either to their doctors\u2019 bias against prescribing meds, family biases, or, in many cases their own internalized bias against using the meds that they are given, people with disabilities similar to Sophie\u2019s are forced to suffer needlessly. There simply aren\u2019t enough portrayals of people with disabilities (yet) for Far From You<\/em> to be viewed as a stand-alone novel about specific characters. It will be seen as representing people with disabilities more broadly, and as such, the addiction reinforces a troubling stereotype.<\/p>\n

In Far From You<\/em> we meet a tenacious but flawed heroine, doing her best in a series of very difficult circumstances. Her disability is an extension of Sophie the individual, never a metaphor. Never a tool of emotional manipulation. This natural portrayal of disability is achieved through Sophie\u2019s own reactions to her body. Sharpe furthers this realism in her depictions of the other characters\u2019 varied relationships to Sophie\u2019s disability. Her mother\u2019s relentless drive to save her, Trev\u2019s need to make everything better, and Mina\u2019s pragmatic approach, all subtly color the fluid reality of life with a disability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A nuanced, natural depiction of disability, realistic in both its physical presentation and the character’s emotional reactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":1753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_generate-full-width-content":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[62,522],"tags":[162,80,89],"genre":[5,124],"age_category":[8],"disability":[32,16,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6922,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1752\/revisions\/6922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"age_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/age_category?post=1752"},{"taxonomy":"disability","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disability?post=1752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}