Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island |
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Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island
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by Ved Mehta
Sales Rank: 733777
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Discount: 49 %
$24.95
At Amazon
on 6-19-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 272 pages
Published by: Nation Books May 2003
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 1560255285
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1560255284
Book Dimensions:
8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
In the 10th and penultimate installment of his Continents of Exile autobiographical series, Mehta (All for Love; Up at Oxford) deftly turns homebuilding into a metaphor for other struggles. Seeking acceptance, love, a home and a family, he evokes their universal nature alongside the unique challenges of his blindness, which render his achievements particularly poignant. "I was glad that I was in a position to give my wife and children some measure of what a sighted husband and a sighted father might give," he writes near the end of this volume, with his island home built and his daughters happily installed in sailing camp. The story begins, though, with the author as a single urbanite living on a writer's meager income, awed by wealthy friends who vacation on Maine's island of Islesboro. While Mehta, a 30-year New Yorker veteran, bristles when people cater to his blindness, the book shows how his condition makes his project breathtakingly difficult. While he is adept at navigating Manhattan, with its myriad sounds, the forested island, accessible only by boat or plane, defies him from the moment a pilot leaves him alone on the airstrip and he briefly panics. Mehta's conversation with himself at this moment captures his social anxiety and the recklessness with which he overcomes it, themes that run throughout the book. "I shouldn't have let him fly away just for the sake of giving Annette [Mehta's friend] the impression that I was every bit the equal of a seeing person," he tells himself. His candid self-observation and clear, clean prose make for an engaging read. Photos.-- the impression that I was every bit the equal of a seeing person," he tells himself. His candid self-observation and clear, clean prose make for an engaging read. Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Mehta, a longtime New Yorker contributor and exceptional memoirist, adds yet another captivating volume to his unparalleled Continents of Exile series, which chronicles his boyhood loss of sight and efforts to live and to write as much in the manner of the sighted as possible. In this installment, he recounts his adventure building a house he never felt he could afford on a small Maine island he could not navigate on his own. In spite of these obstacles, Mehta, then in his forties and unmarried, fell in love with the tiny, wooded, isolated island of Islesboro with its poetically and aptly named town, Dark Harbor, and retained renowned architect Edward Larrabee Barnes to build him a house. As Mehta chronicles with poignant and often hilarious detail his improbable and oddly courageous undertaking, he muses over his determination to transcend his disability, and parallels the construction of his house with the evolution of his marriage and realization of the sweet dream of a safe harbor in which to ride out life's chaos. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader Reviews
Forget the other Great Autobiographies like Paustowsky and Proust. Ved Mehta and his Continents of exile is far better then anything in this field of writing. In very elegant, humorous English he gives you the story of his life, and the angle differs a bit each time. That counts for the disappointed readers that expect a book about The New Yorker or A House On A Maine Island. What you get is the fascinating story of a blind Indian man that grew up in India, came to America, went to England and back to America, and combines all these influences and continents with humor and an intelligent attitude. A great series and another great book.
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Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island
Available from Amazon
Price: $24.95
Updated on 6-19-2008.
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