"Bérubé's timely and significant contributions in The Secret Life of Stories emboldens scholars of the humanities to study more deeply intellectual disability and its function in narrative."An enjoyable and thought-provoking work that will encourage continued engagement with intellectual disability"
Disability Studies Quarterly
"Arguing that the idea of intellectual disability has been for writers and can be for critics an extremely productive nexus for thinking through big questions about narrative and irony, The Secret Life of Storiespushes us further, brilliantly defending the arts and humanities. Bérubés mind for literary analysis is a powerhouse. This little book is a rare treat."
Susan M. Schweik,author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public "Michael Bérubé has long advocated for the importance of the humanities in higher education and in public culture more generally. InThe Secret Life of Stories, he puts that advocacy into practice, demonstrating to readers the multifaceted pleasures of reading. With dazzling ideas about narrative and disability, interwoven with personal stories and delightful readings of a variety of texts,The Secret Life of Storiesis a joy to read. An extraordinary book."
Robert McRuer,author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability "Michael Bérubés son tells us that & in a story things have to happen for a reasonas fine a definition of narrative as Aristotles.That is also true of great literary criticism: it helps us understand why things happen, in literature and in life.This generous, expansive, brilliant book has deep insights for all of us. The Secret Life of Storiesis preciousfor all the right reasons."
Cathy N. Davidson,Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, CUNY, and author of Now You See It: How the Brain Scien ""An enlightening examination."
Library Journal
"[Berube has] picked out select booksthat I can imagine him either teaching or just reading for pleasure, identifying themes to explicate, and taking as much delight in the retelling of key episodes as he does in the deeper analysis."
Los Angeles Review of Books
"This volume is important for connecting disability studies with literary scholarship."
Choice
"The Secret Life of Storiesis certainly a landmark text in literary studies of disability and in literary criticism more generally. It will change the way you think about disability."
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature
"The Secret Life of Stories...gives a reader the feeling of sitting in an engaging seminar with a witty, candid, and empathetic leader. It reviews literary disability studies in a way comprehensible to those new to the field, even as it invigorates and extends that thinking for current disability studiesscholars....Bérubé offers therefore just the right voice to model ideas that make the case for disability as both a matter of social justice and of artistic innovation, marking the maturity of the field even as it works to move it in new directions."
College Literature
"Michael Berube'sThe Secret Life of Storiesis that rare book that manages to speak to its specialized academic audience while imagining and addressing a much broader readership. Berube...has crafted an accessible, if still rigorous, study of the way fiction grapples with intellectual disability."
Slant Magazine
"[A] concise, fresh, and deeply informed look at how we read."
STARRED Kirkus Reviews