Narrator untangles mystery from the cockpit of a wheelchair
Back in January, my oldest son died of sepsis triggered by his neuromuscular disorder, spinal muscular atrophy Type I, also known as SMA. Diagnosed as an infant, he was not expected to live past his second birthday. Through the labours of physicians, nurses and technicians, he survived into legal adulthood — 900 per cent life expectancy.
SMA is the narrative axis of Will Leitch's vigorously written How Lucky, which features a 26-year-old narrator, Daniel, grappling with the limitations of Type II, a milder form. An Illinois native, Daniel has followed his stoner-buddy best friend, Travis, to the college town of Athens, Ga.
Daniel is employed as a customer-service representative for Spectrum Airlines. He sponges up complaints from passengers, a relief from the glances of pity he notices when out in his wheelchair with his Pakistani nurse, Marjani. On social media, then, he creates a life that's otherwise denied him.
He's also determined to solve a mystery that grips Athens. Early in the fall, he observes through his porch window a young Chinese graduate student, Ai-Chin Liao, vanish into a Camaro driven by a white man. She speaks little English. Against a racially volatile background the town rallies to find Ai-Chin, posting flyers, holding vigils. Daniel seeks out police and others to tell his story, but as a disabled man, he can't seem to get anyone's attention.
The puzzle of what happened to Ai-Chin lends momentum to Leitch's plot (also a nod to Hitchcock's Rear Window). Daniel posts a query on Reddit; to his surprise, he's contacted by the driver of the Camaro, who claims that Ai-Chin came with him voluntarily. Or is this guy making it up? The theme of truth-telling — facts versus fantasies, what can and cannot be said — propel How Lucky.
Leitch draws his cast beautifully, And Daniel is a cheeky sleuth, twisting the soft bigotry of low expectations to his advantage.
Although able-bodied, Leitch has modelled Daniel on the son of a friend, vetting his character meticulously. Yet there's a nagging sense of one-degree-removed that mars his novel.
Although SMA phenotypes vary widely, he gets a few crucial details wrong, or at best half-right, from the functions of the cough-assist to the disease's progression to a desultory mention of such transformative drugs as Spinraza.
Lapses stand out. Type II is not the most common form of SMA; that distinction belongs to Type I. And it's unfathomable to me that Daniel and Marjani would break the rules of SMA 101 by heading to an outside gathering without tools for a medical emergency.
But as the suspense kicks in, Daniel takes risks and pursues his instincts, all from the boxlike cockpit of a wheelchair. It's a tricky exercise when a writer steps outside his own personal experience to inhabit a character very different from himself, but How Lucky succeeds. With only a few missteps Leitch gives us an authentic, compelling portrait of a narrator who motors through life with grit and grace.