Book Review - Michael Without Apology by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Trigger alert – this book deals with near-fatal accidents, bereavement, foster placements and terminal illness.

At just seven years of age, Michael becomes the victim of a near-fatal fireworks accident that leaves him with a scarred torso. Immediately after this accident, he is placed in a foster home and when his foster parents apply for adoption, Michael’s birth parents readily agree, leaving him heartbroken and believing that they didn’t want a scarred child.

At nineteen years of age now, Michael comes across a professor Robert Dunning who has ample scars of his own and who, in turn, has learnt to own his scars. Their conversation motivates Michael to shoot a documentary film of people who are struggling with body-image issues.

When Michael pins a hand-written notice on his college bulletin asking for volunteers for his film, he doesn’t expect people to actually call him up and agree for the same. But people do, and not all of them have scars. Most of them are dealing with body-image issues that aren’t even scar-related. There is that 103-year old man who has been an Olympic champion at the prime of his youth, there is the lady who gave birth to triplets and has scars to show that, there is that too-skinny man who has been insulted and laughed upon often, there is Professor Dunning himself who agrees to volunteer for the movie and then there is Madeleine, a cancer-survivor who has had a double mastectomy.

With every revelation on part of these people whom society has often hurt again and again, Michael finds a part of himself healing – the part that often reminded him that when his own parents had given him up for being scarred, he should not expect any relationship to happen.

Michael owns the story. You cannot help falling for him – for the grief he carries, for the innocence he still retains in spite of being at the harsh end of fate, for the hope that still simmers in him no matter how unfair life has been to him. He is someone you won’t forget soon.

The documentary-part left me speechless. Every volunteer speaks in a tone that hits the reader where it hurts. The characters are unforgettable, their trauma heartbreaking and their courage so, so inspiring. Several times throughout the story, I had a difficult time swallowing past the lump in my throat. This story hits you in the jugular and how!

On a personal note, this book is all the more relevant for today’s age where people overload their social media accounts with fancier (and artificial) versions of themselves, thanks to the numerous photo-challenges, avatars or apps that keep coming up, enticing people by showing extremely artificial versions of themselves and making them doubt their original and natural selves. We have enough body-image issues to deal with in real life. The man’s battle with bulge and balding, the woman’s battle with hormones, the teenager’s battle with acne, height, weight and what not, the child’s battle with obesity and thinness – these have made life complicated enough for us. We surely did not need the added pressure of presenting a false version of ourselves in the social media and then despairing when that artificial version doesn’t generate the expected number of views or likes. The day we realize that we are fine with our original selves, the day we move past the physical structure of humans and look at the beauty of their souls, that day we won’t need any external validation or social media challenges or avatars! It is time we accept everyone (including ourselves) unconditionally and live a judgement-free life.

I am a huge fan of Catherine Ryan Hyde and I have read several of her books. Each one of them has left me with a hangover that took days to recover from. This book was no exception, and I highly, highly, highly recommend it.