Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2014
416 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
When Emma Sasha Silver loses her eyesight in a nightmare accident, she must relearn everything from walking across the street to recognizing her own sisters to imagining colors. One of seven children, Emma used to be the invisible kid, but now it seems everyone is watching her. And just as she's about to start high school and try to recover her friendships and former life, one of her classmates is found dead in an apparent suicide. Fifteen and blind, Emma has to untangle what happened and why?in order to see for herself what makes life worth living.
Unflinching in its portrayal of Emma's darkest days, yet full of hope and humor, Rachel DeWoskin's brilliant Blind is one of those rare books that utterly absorbs the reader into the life and experience of another.
"Starred Review. By using Claire's death as a counterpoint to Emma's misfortune - one chosen, the other inflicted - DeWoskin enables her characters and readers to put tragedy into perspective." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. With traces of John Green's Looking for Alaska...a vivid, sensory tour of the shifting landscapes of blindness and teen relationships" - Kirkus
"Emma's struggle to deal with her blindness, friendships, family, and future is confounded by the contemporary concerns of teen suicide, lesbianism, underage substance abuse, and premarital sex. Often these issues do little to enhance her story but appear to be added as a gratuitous attempt to be all inclusive, making sure no ethnicity, religion, or special-interest group goes unmentioned." - VOYA
"While excessive descriptions and multiple sideplots make this contemporary novel a bit overstuffed and detract from Emma's growth in the final quarter, it is nevertheless a well-researched and much-needed story." - School Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rachel DeWoskin's fourth book, the critically acclaimed novel, Blind, was published in August, 2014. Her most recent novel, Big Girl Small, (FSG 2011) received the 2012 American Library Association's Alex Award and was named one of the top 3 books of 2011 by Newsday. DeWoskin's memoir, Foreign Babes in Beijing (2005) about the years she spent in China as the unlikely star of a Chinese soap opera, has been published in six countries, optioned first by Paramount for a feature film and then by HBO to be developed into a television series, for which DeWoskin co-wrote the pilot episode. Her debut novel Repeat After Me (2009), about a Chinese dissident navigating New York City in 1989, won a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.
She has written essays and articles for ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Rachel DeWoskin's Website
Name Pronunciation
Rachel DeWoskin: deh-WOSS-kin
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