Review of Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir
Cover of Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir – gray background with yellow and black text.
By Victoria Wheeler, Member of the Diversability Leadership Collective
Disclosure: This review was written for the Diversability Leadership Collective after receiving a complimentary copy of Paul Rousseau’s Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir.
When I offered to read and review Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir, I didn’t really know what to expect. The truth is, now that I have read the story and processed the author’s trauma, I hope that my book review can do the book justice. I was feeling immense pressure to format my review in the same way as the book – scattered thoughts that were full of emotion. Once I let go of those expectations to play copycat, my true writer’s voice was able to come through.
Friendly Fire is one of those stories that pulls you in and keeps you on the edge of the seat from the very beginning. We’re introduced to Paul, the protagonist of the story, and his best friend and roommate, Mark. We learn that Mark has accidentally shot his best friend in the head. Paul and Mark are men that are in the last semester of undergrad studies and are so close to graduation that they can practically taste it. But then, Paul’s whole life changes – the bullet lodged in his brain is classified as a TBI (traumatic brain injury) and from that he also develops PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). The book is divided into short chapters, and the first statement about disability that really caught my attention was in the second chapter of the book: “I qualify as Disabled. I identify as Disabled. In a world increasingly attuned to the damage of ableism, I want to add to this conversation and show what my disability can do. It is a challenge. I still want people to know what happened” (Rousseau, page 6). I think that the ability to recognize disability and embrace that as part of your new identity says a lot about your character. It becomes very clear throughout the book that Paul hasn’t always embraced his identity as a Disabled person, but that he does the best he can to deal with the loss of his old identity and life and to integrate his new identity into his new life.
Traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, the increased cost of living as a disabled person, and a critique of the American healthcare and legal systems – this book touches on all of those things – through the eyes of a young man, his family, and a (former) best friend.
Most of the storytelling is done through flashbacks from present-day. We get a real taste of all of the most frustrating parts of living with a disability that is acquired later in life. We see Paul survive surgeries, therapy sessions, debilitating TBI symptoms, and a complete change in his sense of safety and his sense of self.
Before the injury, Paul was a writer – the one part of himself that doesn’t change post injury. It’s just that now, he feels compelled to tell a story he never imagined having to tell. My copy of this book is full of margin notes and highlighted passages. It turns out that reading a harrowing tale of acquired disability is easier to process when you can interact with the story by making notes as you read. I will definitely be re-reading this story, and probably multiple times. It’s just that good. Disability can take a lot from a person, but we are fortunately able to see Paul thrive post-injury by writing his own story about what happened. His writing seemed to have helped him heal. He’s in such a different place by the end of the story that he refers to the anniversary of the day he got shot as his second birthday. I think that’s a pretty cool way to take your power back from a situation that would have otherwise ruined your whole life. It’s as if you’re saying yes, this situation might have ruined my old life, but it’s up to me to make the best of my new life, to focus on the present and future and not to dwell on the past.
To Paul, I say well done, sir. Thank you for telling your story and for (maybe unknowingly) inspiring other disabled people to tell our stories, too.
To future readers, I say, buy the book, read the book, and then re-read the book. May this story encourage you to listen to more and more stories of disabled people. I know that we all have one inside of us, waiting to be told.