Tag: The Barbellion Prize

Kika & Me: Me by Amit Patel

Kika & Me: How One Extraordinary Guide Dog Changed My World by Amit Patel

Shortlisted for The 2020 Barbellion Prize

Summary:

Amit Patel is working as a trauma doctor when a rare condition causes him to lose his sight within thirty-six hours. Totally dependent on others and terrified of stepping outside with a white cane after he’s assaulted, he hits rock bottom. He refuses to leave home on his own for three months. With the support of his wife Seema he slowly adapts to his new situation, but how could life ever be the way it was? Then his guide dog Kika comes along . . .

But Kika’s stubbornness almost puts her guide dog training in jeopardy – could her quirky personality be a perfect match for someone? Meanwhile Amit has reservations – can he trust a dog with his safety? Paired together in 2015, they start on a journey, learning to trust each other before taking to the streets of London and beyond. The partnership not only gives Amit a renewed lease of life but a new best friend. Then, after a video of an irate commuter rudely asking Amit to step aside on an escalator goes viral, he sets out with Kika by his side to spread a message of positivity and inclusivity, showing that nothing will hold them back.

From the challenges of travelling when blind to becoming a parent for the first time, Kika & Me is the moving, heart-warming and inspirational story of Amit’s sight-loss journey and how one guide dog changed his world.

My Review:

I read Dr Amit Patel’s incredible story of courage over two sittings and Kika & Me (Pan Macmillan) is a very personal account of how Amit lost his sight despite everything that could have been done. It is an inspiring account and one that has so much love throughout Amit’s story.

Hardback cover (February 2020)

It is not easy to tell a very personal story, but Amit does so with courage and tells the story of how this busy A&E doctor suddenly realised that he had a serious problem with his eyesight and visits to hospitals soon turned into surgery which also then included re-mortgaging the family home to pay for an American eye surgeon to come over to the UK to perform surgery that would save Amit’s eyesight. Amit was suffering from a condition called keratoconus which is a disorder of the eye that results in a thinning of the cornea. This was an extremely worrying time for the whole family.

All seemed to be going well for Amit and he was back at work and then one morning the realisation that the surgery had failed, and Amit was going to lose his eyesight. This was devastating for everyone, and this a year of getting married to Seema but Amit was not going to be down for long and soon there was a life to look forward to. With a loving family around him and the support of friends and organisations Amit was soon getting the help he needed. Amit shares with the reader his personal account of what it was like, there is no hiding anything. Amit was going to tell it as it was.

Six months after being on the waiting list there was guide dog to help Amit, Kika of course is the real star of the book and I loved how Amit called Kika ‘The fairy dog mother’ never leaving Amit’s side. There are so many stories that are shared of Kika and their travels. Theirs is an incredibly special bond.

There are of course some stories that Amit shares that left me fuming one story where Amit is travelling on a tube and is confronted by a man who after a confrontation knocks Amit to the floor of the train even though the train was busy with passengers and no-one came to help. I for one have never looked the other way and gone to help, but this was not the only occasion that Amit had to endure the worst of some people.

Despite this, Kika & Me is just a moving personal story that Amit Patel shares with the reader. Amit and Seema now have two children and Amit now helps others who have lost their sight by volunteering with the RNIB and Guide Dogs for the Blind. Amit’s story is uplifting and inspiring. I learned so much from Amit’s sight loss journey. Highly recommended.

You can follow Dr Amit Patel and Kika on Twitter: @BlindDad_UK and @Kika_GuideDog

For further information on the RNIB and Guide Dogs for the Blind please visit: RNIB  and Guide Dogs

For more information on The Barbellion Prize please visit: Barbellion Prize

304 Pages.

I am extremely grateful to Cat Mitchell, Pan Macmillan and the Barbellion Prize review copy of Kika & Me by Amit Patel.

Kika & Me by Amit Patel was published by Pan Macmillan and is available in hardback. The paperback will be published on 4th March 2021 and is available to pre-order through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org

THE BARBELLION PRIZE

The Barbellion Prize was founded and dedicated further the voices of ill and disabled writers. This is a prize awarded each year to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness or disability.

The award recognises work submitted for fiction, memoir, biography, poetry or critical non-fiction and can be from around the world in English or translation and can be published work from a publisher or self-published.

Further information about the prize can be found via their website: The Barbellion Prize

You can follow progress of the Barbellion Prize via Twitter: @BarbellionPrize and Instagram: @barbellionprize

The prize is named after the English diarist W.N.P. Barbellion who wrote about living with multiple sclerosis until his death in 1919.

The shortlist for the 2020 Barbellion Prize was announced:

Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer (Published by Virago)

The Fragments of my Father: A memoir of madness, love and being a carer by Sam Mills (published by Fourth Estate)

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer (Published by Penned in the Margins)

Kika & Me by Amit Patel (Published by Pan Macmillan)

Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer

Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer

Shortlisted for The 2020 Barbellion Prize

Summary:

In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to ‘fix’ her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured.

Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark-it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits-inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she’s been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal.

Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva’s work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author’s magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.

My Review:

Riva Lehrer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1958 and Riva was born with spina bifida. Many children born with spina bifida during this time were not expected to live. Golem Girl (Virago) is an extraordinary memoir of a life lived and destined to be different.

The first thing that struck me was the title and I had to go and look up the meaning of Golem and it is an artificial creature made of clay that turns into a real person by magic.

Riva Lehrer is a successful writer and artist; the list of awards and achievements is long as is the list of exhibits for her work. In Golem Girl, Riva talks of her early life and through the many surgical procedures she had to go through. Riva’s mother would do whatever it took to get the correct medical advice and treatment but despite everything it was tortuous for Riva. Being told she would never be loved or desired is devastating to a young person.  

As the book moved into its second part Riva talks about finding her true self and a career and being excepted for who she really is in society. Riva was going to make an impression on the world as an artist and writer and she has done that with gusto. Throughout the book there are photographs from her early years through to the artistic work where she uses her gift to express her life and how it changed as time went on.

As Golem Girl draws to a close, we see that Riva looks at the disability culture as she becomes an activist on this front as the decades moved on. Throughout Riva writes with incredible honesty and humour.

If you have an interest in disability culture, this is a book I would recommend. Golem Girl has been shortlisted for The 2020 Barbellion Prize with the winner being announced on 12th February 2021.

You can read more about Riva Lehrer via her website:  Riva Lehrer

Follow news of The Barbellion Prize: The Barbellion Prize

448 Pages.

I am extremely grateful to Cat Mitchell, Virago and the Barbellion Prize review copy of Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer.

Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer is published by Virago and was published on 8th December 2020 and is available to order through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org

THE BARBELLION PRIZE

The Barbellion Prize was founded and dedicated further the voices of ill and disabled writers. This is a prize awarded each year to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness or disability.

The award recognises work submitted for fiction, memoir, biography, poetry or critical non-fiction and can be from around the world in English or translation and can be published work from a publisher or self-published.

Further information about the prize can be found via their website: The Barbellion Prize

You can follow progress of the Barbellion Prize via Twitter: @BarbellionPrize and Instagram: @barbellionprize

The prize is named after the English diarist W.N.P. Barbellion who wrote about living with multiple sclerosis until his death in 1919.

The shortlist for the 2020 Barbellion Prize was announced:

Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer (Published by Virago)

The Fragments of my Father: A memoir of madness, love and being a carer by Sam Mills (published by Fourth Estate)

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer (Published by Penned in the Margins)

Kika & Me by Amit Patel (Published by Pan Macmillan)

The winner of the 2020 Barbellion Prize will be announced on 12th February.

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer

The Barbellion Prize – Shortlisted

Summary:

A young woman spends a month taking the waters at a thermal water-based rehabilitation facility in Budapest. On her return to London, she attempts to continue her recovery using an £80 inflatable blue bathtub. The tub becomes a metaphor for the intrusion of disability; a trip hazard in the middle of an unsuitable room, slowly deflating and in constant danger of falling apart. Sanatorium moves through contrasting spaces bathtub to thermal pool, land to water, day to night interlacing memoir, poetry and meditations on the body to create a mesmerising, mercurial debut. ‘There is a dreamlike quality to Abi Palmer’s exquisite Sanatorium. In lucid, gorgeous prose, she tells the story of a body, of illness and of navigating the complicated wellness industry, but ultimately this is a book about what it means to be alive. A striking, experimental debut that will stay with me.’ Sinéad Gleeson

My Review:

Author Abi Palmer is the narrator of her first book Sanatorium (Penned in the Margins). Shortlisted for 2020 The Barbellion Prize and is written in short paragraphs of her experiences of spending a month in a water based rehabilitation programme based in Hungary.

Throughout Sanatorium you get to understand just how important water and floating is to our narrator and there is a dreamlike prose to the narration. When Abi is in the water the sense of pain dissipates as she floats in the water. Abi is in so much pain from the conditions that she suffers from being in the water is an escape.

It is 2017 and the trip to the sanatorium is funded by a research programme and the month she spends here, on return to her home in the UK she decides to buy herself a plastic tub for her home so she can float and ease the pain.

As the writing is in small paragraphs the reader will notice at the top of each page the location that moves from Budapest to London and Chertsey (Surrey). At times the prose is poetic with the use of drawings.

Abi is in so much pain that she cannot walk for too long unaided, the descriptions are vivid and descriptive about living with a chronic illness and learning too trust your body even if your body does not want to work.

This was never meant to be a straightforward memoir which makes Sanatorium so unique and but also important in the way that Abi writes about her life living with chronic pain, there is no self-pity here from Abi but just the beautiful way she writes. At times funny and also sad.

We all know what it is like to slide into a warm bath at the end of a hard day. Just stop for a minute and think what getting into a warm pool is like for someone like Abi living in constant pain and illness.

I read Sanatorium in one sitting and in my own view a strong candidate to win The 2020 Barbellion Prize.

222 Pages.

@abipalmer_bot

@PennedintheM

#TheBarbellionPrize

I am extremely grateful to Cat Mitchell, Penned in the Margins and the Barbellion Prize review copy of Sanatorium by Abi Palmer.

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer is published by Penned in the Margins and was published on 20th April 2020 and is available to order through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org

The Barbellion Prize

The Barbellion Prize was founded and dedicated further the voices of ill and disabled writers. This is a prize awarded each year to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness or disability.

The award recognises work submitted for fiction, memoir, biography, poetry or critical non-fiction and can be from around the world in English or translation and can be published work from a publisher or self-published.

Further information about the prize can be found via their website: The Barbellion Prize

You can follow progress of the Barbellion Prize via Twitter: @BarbellionPrize and Instagram: @barbellionprize

The prize is named after the English diarist W.N.P. Barbellion who wrote about living with multiple sclerosis until his death in 1919.

The shortlist for the 2020 Barbellion Prize was announced:

Golem Girl: A Memoir by Riva Lehrer (Published by Virago)

The Fragments of my Father: A memoir of madness, love and being a carer by Sam Mills (published by Fourth Estate)

Sanatorium by Abi Palmer (Published by Penned in the Margins)

Kika & Me by Amit Patel (Published by Pan Macmillan)

The winner of the 2020 Barbellion Prize will be announced on 12th February

The Journal of a Disapointed Man by W. N. P. Barbellion (Penguin Classics)