An Unexpected Normal
Raising a Child with Special Needs
An Unexpected Normal is a poignant memoir about how a family handled the challenges of their youngest’s disabilities.
Rita T. Angelini’s heartrending memoir An Unexpected Normal is about parenting a child with severe disabilities.
Angelini daughter, Kiki, developed a host of complications because Angelini wasn’t given antibiotics at the time of her birth. At first, Angelini denied the seriousness of her daughter’s condition. In time, she became motivated to face Kiki’s problems with determination and optimism.
As Kiki grew, Angelini struggled to meet her needs, even as Marina, her older daughter, vied for her attention too. She worked with therapists and took Kiki around the world for innovative treatments. The book includes daily memories of driving to appointments in addition to small victories and crises; months are covered in a sweeping format, their events repetitive. When she was ten years old, Kiki’s seizures led to additional hurdles, and she passed away at the age of twelve.
Organized around Angelini’s changing relationship with “normal,” which evolved to incorporate steps like fixing, accepting, and saving situations, this is a poignant memoir. However, its early chapters assume a drifting pace, listing Kiki’s symptoms and covering palliative care with an air of overwhelm. Indeed, the bulk of the text is taken up by accounts of the intensive care that Kiki required.
Conversations are used to convey the shifting interpersonal paradigms, including frustrating exchanges with doctors who didn’t listen to Angelini, and with insurance personnel adding busywork to her already heavy load. More cheering are the tributes to Kiki put forth by Marina and their neighbors, and the support of church groups and others who worked to ensure the family’s well-being. The conversations between Angelini and her husband that are included here focus on their disagreements about how to handle Kiki and Marina.
There are infrequent, short declarations related to Angelini’s emotional states in the midst of her challenges, but the book’s tone is understated and stoic on the whole. In later chapters, this shifts, with the book working to expose the consequences of Angelini’s self-denial in Marina’s high school health crisis. The ending moves swiftly through notes on a string of emergencies at the end of Kiki’s life, the loss of Kiki, and on how Angelini regained her faith, working toward an epilogue that reiterates Kiki’s pivotal role in her family.
The elegiac memoir An Unexpected Normal is about a family’s acute loss; it encourages others to test poor cultural norms.
Reviewed by
Mari Carlson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
