Blind main characters

[shanaqui]

Can anyone recommend me books with blind main (or at least significant) characters? I think I know of one-and-a-half: Stephen Lawhead's Paradise War trilogy has Tegid, and in Ursula Le Guin's Gifts, Orrec is voluntarily and temporarily "blinded". I'd prefer books where the blindness isn't magically hand-waved away: it's real, and it gets in the way, and the protagonist learns to deal with it. I don't mind about being born blind, being blinded by violence or illness, or slowly going blind with age.

Comments

[lferion]

Ellen Kushner's 'Swordspoint' and 'Priviledge of the Sword' (Main character in the first book, secondary but very important in the second. He doesn't start out blind.

Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles - particularly Pawn in Frankincense, Ringed Castle and Checkmate - but one should really read them all for the second half to make complete sense.

[shanaqui]

I forgot Swordspoint! It's been so long since I read it. I loved that, I had no idea about it until I got there and it was an interesting surprise.

Ooh, I have those on my to read list.

Thank you!

[kyriacarlisle]

Emily Gregory, in Madeleine L'Engle's The Young Unicorns (warning: wikipedia entry=spoilers), is a teenaged pianist blinded in a robbery-gone-wrong. The book's a thriller, kind of, set in and around the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in NYC, but it's also full of L'Engle's characteristic concern with family life. It's the 3rd book in the Austen family series, but I read it before any of the others, and I wasn't lost.

It *does* have a very late-1960s view of Drugs And The Decay Of Urban Society, but it's still rather an innocent book. There's a lot of music written into it, and I really liked that.

[shanaqui]

Thank you! I've been meaning to read something by Madeleine L'Engle someday, maybe this'll be what I choose.

[kyriacarlisle]

I'll admit that although a lot of L'Engle's books make me think, "Come on! Is anybody's family really this nice?!?" that might be me, not her - and in an odd way, I value them more for that.

And I feel a little silly suggesting this, but if you're including Greek tragedy: Oedipus at Colonus?

[kathmandu]

Follow My Leader: kids/YA book in which our hero is blinded at the beginning. The book follows him adjusting to being blind; Leader is what he names his guide dog. Not a problem book.

[shanaqui]

I hadn't thought about plays -- I've read that one! Hee.

[shanaqui]

Thank you!

[manifesta]

Hawkspar by Holly Lisle.

She's blind for the vast majority of the book. She (spoiler!) is no longer blind by the end but, as you say, she has to learn to deal with it.

Actually, I will be analyzing it for 3W4D, and it will be one of the books up for grabs in my giveaway.

[shanaqui]

Interesting! I already subscribed to your journal, so I'll be seeing your analysis of that.

[maharetr]

This is Young(er) Adult, but Elaine Forrestal's Someone Like Me is one of those books that I read really fast one afternoon, hit the end and went: 'wait, what?' and reread far more carefully. It might be younger than you're after, but it's really well done.

[shanaqui]

I'll look out for it!

[boundbooks]

N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Kingdoms' protagonist is blind. I quite enjoyed the book, as well. It's epic fantasy and well-written. It's the second in a trilogy, and while you don't at all need to read the books in order to enjoy the second one (they have different protagonists and take place ten years apart), I'd recommend the series as a whole. Jemisin has also written about why her character is blind, and the ways in which she tried to write her, and the ways in which she wishes she could have done a better job: (Warning: Likely contains spoilers for the first and second books) Why is Oree Shoth blind?

The Broken Kingdoms: "In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a strange homeless man on an impulse. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. And Oree’s guest is at the heart of it…"

[shanaqui]

Hee, I love N.K. Jemisin's work.

[boundbooks]

Yay! Glad you've found her, then. I'm really looking forward to the last book in the series. :D

[shanaqui]

Me tooo. Which makes me wonder if I've preordered it yet...