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Recommendations for books with Disabled characters


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Hi, I wonder if anyone could suggest books, which have a main character with a disability , who are not portrayed as weak and defenseless, or are not portrayed as the 'baddie' in the book please? I've seen these tropes enough in books and I'm fed up of it.

 

I have a a physical disability myself, so I would like to read something with this representation. It'll also help me with my TBR list for the Disability Read-a-thon in October.

 

Thanks in advance!

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I  can think of a few but they're mainly crime, however the main characters do have a disability:

 

C J Sansom's Shardlake series -  the main character is a lawyer who has a hunchback (not a very PC term I'm afraid)

 

Robert Galbraith's series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, who lost a leg in one of the recent Middle East conflicts (haven't read these for a while but I think it was in Afghanistan) - he's a troubled character but essentially decent

 

and then there's Game of Thrones, where one of the main characters is a person of restricted height (again sorry if  that's not the correct term) but he is one of the best characters and although he is much maligned (and at one point does do something pretty awful, although he has his reasons) he is highly intelligent, witty and extremely resourceful.

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18 minutes ago, Madeleine said:

I  can think of a few but they're mainly crime, however the main characters do have a disability:

 

C J Sansom's Shardlake series -  the main character is a lawyer who has a hunchback (not a very PC term I'm afraid)

 

Robert Galbraith's series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, who lost a leg in one of the recent Middle East conflicts (haven't read these for a while but I think it was in Afghanistan) - he's a troubled character but essentially decent

 

and then there's Game of Thrones, where one of the main characters is a person of restricted height (again sorry if  that's not the correct term) but he is one of the best characters and although he is much maligned (and at one point does do something pretty awful, although he has his reasons) he is highly intelligent, witty and extremely resourceful.

Thanks for your suggestions! I did try and read the first book in the 'Game of Thrones' series and wasn't very keen on the writing style. Maybe it gets better as you read on? 

I'll definitely try and look up the other 2 books thougg!

 

 

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Have you read  the autobiography My Left Foot by Christy Brown, Karen?  He  was born with cerebral palsy and went on to be an author, painter and poet.

I agree, it's annoying to have physically disabled characters always portrayed as weak or the villians!

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4 hours ago, poppy said:

Have you read  the autobiography My Left Foot by Christy Brown, Karen?  He  was born with cerebral palsy and went on to be an author, painter and poet.

I agree, it's annoying to have physically disabled characters always portrayed as weak or the villians!

No, I haven't read 'My Left Foot', thanks for your suggestion ☺️. I'll add it to my list.

 

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18 hours ago, karen.d said:

Thanks for your suggestions! I did try and read the first book in the 'Game of Thrones' series and wasn't very keen on the writing style. Maybe it gets better as you read on? 

I'll definitely try and look up the other 2 books thougg!

 

 

I actually found the 2nd book harder to get into than the first one, the writing style was quite different.  Still if you think it's not your thing that's fair enough. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I would recommend the Lincoln Rhyme series by crime writer Jeffery Deaver. There are about 14 books so far in the series, all really good crime thrillers, well paced with good characters.

 

Here's the start of the synopsis for the first book in the series, The Bone Collector, 

Lincoln Rhyme, ex-head of NYPD forensics, was the nation’s foremost criminalist, the man who could work a crime scene and come away with a perfect profile of the killer, frozen in time. Now, Lincoln is frozen in place — permanently. An accident on the job left him a quadriplegic who can move just one finger, a great mind strapped to his bed, mulish and sarcastic, hiding from a life he no longer wants to live. Until he sees the crime-scene report about a corpse found buried on a deserted West Side railroad track.

 

A stand alone novel, also by Jeffery Deaver that is a firm favourite of mine is A Maiden's Grave, a hostage taking / FBI negotiation setting. 

A school bus stops at a car crash on an isolated road. The two teachers and their deaf students are immediately captured by three escaped convicts.

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5 hours ago, Chrissy said:

I would recommend the Lincoln Rhyme series by crime writer Jeffery Deaver. There are about 14 books so far in the series, all really good crime thrillers, well paced with good characters.

 

Here's the start of the synopsis for the first book in the series, The Bone Collector, 

Lincoln Rhyme, ex-head of NYPD forensics, was the nation’s foremost criminalist, the man who could work a crime scene and come away with a perfect profile of the killer, frozen in time. Now, Lincoln is frozen in place — permanently. An accident on the job left him a quadriplegic who can move just one finger, a great mind strapped to his bed, mulish and sarcastic, hiding from a life he no longer wants to live. Until he sees the crime-scene report about a corpse found buried on a deserted West Side railroad track.

 

A stand alone novel, also by Jeffery Deaver that is a firm favourite of mine is A Maiden's Grave, a hostage taking / FBI negotiation setting. 

A school bus stops at a car crash on an isolated road. The two teachers and their deaf students are immediately captured by three escaped convicts.

Has the novel been adapted into a film with Morgan Freeman? If it's the same one, then this was a brilliant film. So I will be adding this to my TBR. Thanks for the suggestion

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Aside from Unbroken which I think I recommended in another thread to you, I just thought of another book. Accessing the Future is a science-fiction short story anthology with a theme of disability. There's a story in there that features a girl with spina bifida if I remember it correctly :friends3:.

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1 hour ago, Athena said:

Aside from Unbroken which I think I recommended in another thread to you, I just thought of another book. Accessing the Future is a science-fiction short story anthology with a theme of disability. There's a story in there that features a girl with spina bifida if I remember it correctly :friends3:.

Ohh this sounds interesting! I will look this up too, thanks!

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