In Beautiful Lives, Stephen Unwin sets out to offer a historical overview of the treatment of those with learning disabilities in the West, along with new ways of approaching them today. His reason for this study is his son, Joey, to whom the book is dedicated.
His conclusion appears to be (yet also isn’t, since every possible argument therein is quickly negated by every other possible argument – here is a writer keen to avoid backlash), that we need to re-evaluate our equation of worth with intellectual ability, so as to better appreciate the qualities embodied in many of disabled people; namely, a capacity for joy, pleasure in small things, affection and so forth.
Inevitably, there are enormous practical and moral difficulties involved in this. For one thing, who will perform surgeries if we don’t value intellectual ability? Secondly, how demeaning for those with learning disabilities, to value them only in relation to ourselves, and for the same qualities we seek in our pets.
But let’s talk about the good. The early sections, which discuss the history of learning disabilities, especially Unwin’s focus on the etymology of language surrounding various conditions, is truly fascinating and worth reading.
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It’s when Unwin lets his own voice push through that the whole thing gets into serious trouble. This book is clearly (as can be discerned from the plethora of celebrity quotes, declaiming it “beautiful”, “heart-rending”, “wise”, “superb” and so on) a noble endeavour, one whose intention is to offer insight into a minority who often get overlooked.
So far, so admirable. Yet it’s (among other things) Unwin’s supreme awareness of his own nobility in writing such a book that so ineluctably ensures its failure. Even long before he starts quoting his own tweets and recounting their reception (“almost 90,000 ‘likes’ and 2,000 ‘retweets’ and was, for a moment, ‘trending’”), Unwin’s pious tone summons, more than anything, David Brent playing guitar. Never, surely, has a published book featured more sentences starting with the word “Tragically”.
What a shame. Perhaps, if he’d spent less time on Twitter, he wouldn’t have developed that platform’s unfortunate tic of needing to be, first and foremost, liked, and could instead have written a book less blandly balanced and faux-humble. I’d have liked fewer cliches and righteous manifestos, and more practical understanding.
