From the moment his mother tries unsuccessfully to coax him into saying
"Philadelphia," Jeremy Zorn's life is framed by his unwieldy attempts
at articulation. Through family rituals with his word-obsessed parents
and sister, failed first love, an ill-fated run for class president, as
the only Jewish boy on an otherwise all-black basketball team, all of
the passages of Jeremy's life are marked in some way by his stutter and
his wildly off-the-mark attempts at a cure. It is only when he enters
college and learns his strong-willed mother is dying that he realizes
all languages, when used as hiding places for the heart, are dead ones.
“An
astonishing and mordantly witty tour de force. David Shields, a
virtuoso of the written word, manages to make the halting,
self-conscious agonies of his stuttering hero into a metaphor for all
our disjointed, doomed attempts at self-definition through connection.
He has transcended his subject and written a book that will touch
everyone who has suffered over the inadequacies of speech to sustain
life and love.” —Lynne Sharon Schwartz
