![]() ![]() ![]() He has the body of an old boxer: square, really, like a shirt box on end. Brown, in the gutsy style he employs for the entire book, describes Walker thus: Walker can’t talk, is in diapers, and will probably never develop mentally beyond the equivalent of a two-year-old. ![]() CFC is so rare that doctors call it an orphan syndrome: about one hundred people around the world have it. The disorder does physically affect these parts of the body, but its most severe consequence is to the brain, resulting in severe mental delay. Walker has a genetic mutation called cardiofaciocutaneous (CFC) syndrome, which loosely translates as ‘heart-face-skin syndrome’. Thirteen years ago Ian Brown, a Canadian features journalist and author, was forced to abandon his fairly conventional existence when his second child Walker was born. The Boy in the Moon is aptly subtitled A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son. ![]() You see, my initial reaction was to meet the affecting extraordinariness of the book with a torrent of gushing praise, but knew that sort of review wouldn’t get within cooee of doing it justice. And two, I was distinctly aware of my emotional response to the story it would have shaped my writing into pink gooey praise. One, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the remarkable and slow-burning energy of the work and thus, toddler-like, I subconsciously ran and hid from it. I waited some days after reading The Boy in the Moon before attempting to review it. ![]()
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