This debut novel, drawing imaginatively on the author's own experiences of parenting a son who has been diagnosed as being 'profoundly developmentally disabled', is a moving and ambitious attempt to explore perspectives on what it means to be severely physically impaired in our society. It raises a host of challenging and important issues in an admirably non-judgemental, sympathetic fashion, mainly by allowing the reader to engage with different people's views of Shawn, the teenage protagonist, whose severe cerebral palsy means that he has absolutely no control over his muscles, no means of communication and no means of exercising even the remotest level of control over his environment.

The novel explores the full impact of Shawn's situation by imaginatively presenting his inside-story via first-person narration. Above all, Shawn is presented as a 'normal' teenager, working out his relationship to his parents, where he fits in family life, what he wants to be and do. Like anyone else, Shawn is simply growing up. Like anyone else, he has particular attributes that make him unique. He is clever, sensitive, devastatingly funny, perceptive and resilient. Admittedly we gradually see, from Shawn's point of view, what it feels like to be so physically helpless and utterly dependent on others that you can't even blink away a fly that settles on your eye, nor focus at will on the television, a book, or people's expressions. Shawn gives us accurate information in an honest, frank and matter-of-fact way about his disability without ever asking us to feel sorry for him or pity him for it. Far from it, by far the most difficult thing for Shawn, just like any of us, is the way in which people judge you, provide for you and deal with you according to their own assumptions, values and attitudes about who you are, what you are and what they think you ought to be.

Shawn knows that people's pity is actually one of the most threatening aspects of his life, because it drives them to act on his behalf without any real understanding of what makes him tick and with no appreciation of him as a person, rather than a problem. He generously perceives why this is so: it is other people who are perceptually limited, not him. Other people are unable to communicate with Shawn, for instance, because they fail to see past his disability. No-one thinks to experiment with alternative ways of communicating with Shawn and as a result, they unwittingly enforce his isolation. What I most admire in this novel is the way in which Trueman shows that this perceptual limitation is not just a case of everyone mindless labelling 'the disabled' based on external appearances, ignorance and intolerance (although the horrifying consequences of this are shown in a savage physical attack on Shawn by two bullying teenagers). The author allows us to see that what is done to and for Shawn in the name of genuine love and protection can also devastatingly restrict and limit his life, even to the point of threatening it. Shawn's father, for example, wonders if euthanasia would be for the best. In this way the novel reflects intensely, sympathetically and generously on the fears, self-doubts and feelings of inadequacy that motivate the people who love Shawn. Despite this level of reflection and emotional intensity, however, the novel is far from lacking pace and dramatic interest.

Ultimately, for me, the plot is riveting as an exploration of teenagers who, like real teenagers such as Anne Frank, grow up under circumstances of extreme threat because of prejudice and intolerance, or feel limited by the way in which people see them. Like Anne Frank, Shawn is depicted convincingly as a testament to the intelligence - emotional and moral, as well as intellectual intelligence- of individual youngsters. In the final analysis it is his remarkable capacity to make sense of himself, his situation, and the actions of others that really makes him special, not his disability.