THE son of a Dublin bricklayer, Christy Brown Was born
in 1932 with an injury to his brain which so damaged his power of movement that, till he was eighteen, he could not even sit norm- ally, nor use his hands nor articulate words. The only limb over which he had any control was his left foot.
This book is his autobiography. In it -he describes, simply and vividly, how he fought for the means to express himself and contribute to his world: how he learnt to write with his foot; the passion with which he began painting when he was nine and first became fully aware of his Position (till then, thanks to the luck of having been born into a large, poor family, he had been protected from self-consciousness—when his elder. brothers went out to play they took him with them in a little cart or on their shoulders, as a matter of course and without pity, and he accepted, himself as normal); how he began to write stories and to educate himself by reading and, finally, how he went at the age of eighteen to the clinic for the treatment of cerebral palsy started by Dr: Robert Collins (who contributes a foreword and medical epilogue to his- book), where he learnt to sit and stand normally, walk a little and Speak so that strangers can understand hina. It is the story of fantastic courage, the courage of Christy Brown himself and of his mother who first refused, against all the evidence, to believe that he was mentally defective and then, with twelve other children to look after, had the strength and faith to urge him continu- ally forwards. It is not a book only for those directly concerned with cerebral palsy. We can all learn from the writer's refusal to be shut in by self-pity and bitterness over his limitations.
CAROL STEWART
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