Survival stories are not lacking. 

They occupy bookshelves, podcast feeds, documentary lists, and social media feeds. And, it appears that everyone has a tale of overcoming. And yet, to stop us in our tracks again, the really honest ones–the ones that are written without performance or polish–yet manage to do so. 

Why is that? 

Since the majority of narratives of survival, even the well-intentioned ones, turn into selling a certain form of resilience that is slightly out of reach. The protagonist suffers. The protagonist rises. The music swells. The lesson falls perfectly. And somewhere in the midst of all that edifice, the sloppy human truth is smoothed down. 

Nothing is smoothed over by Avis Townsend. 

In her memoir Paraplegic, she starts with a normal day, which turns out to be disastrous. A frosty morning in December. A trip to the barn. A car crash that inflicted a spinal cord injury so severe that she went into a coma and alters the course of her whole life. The remainder of her writing after this time is not of a person who has already attained wisdom, but of one who is yet in the making of it. 

The difference is significant. 

When we read a story of survival from the end of it, there is always an implication: I have survived and here is what I have learned. It is reassuring. But it also establishes a distance between the author and the reader who is currently experiencing the problem. 

Avis writes from a different position. She brings the reader into the uncertainty. Into the deliriums of the ICU. Into the rehabilitation centre where recovery is painstaking and the burden emotional. Into the commonplace, unfilmic days when it takes effort to stay alive. 

That’s where the real communication occurs. 

Her character is one of the few things that are very rare these days – personality. She writes with humour. Not the kind that stops hurt, but rather the kind that is in its midst. The kind that says, I can see that this is ridiculou,s and I am here anyway. That quality is disarming. It makes it sound like a dialogue, not just a testimony. 

Then there is family. Avis doesn’t tell her story alone because she didn’t live it alone. Her family and friends, who were there for her through thick and thin, are part of every story. That need and dependence are a common element missing from other survivor stories, perhaps because it feels like it undermines the heroics.  

It does not. It makes the story more real. Stories like Paraplegic stand the test of time because they provide something that inspirational stories do not. They offer company. When a reader is sitting in their own despair – whatever that may be – and they come across a voice that does not gloss over the pain, something happens. 

They feel less alone. Which is what good survival stories do. They don’t just record the suffering of one person. They speak to others: you can survive this. You do not have to carry it well. 

Avis Townsend’s book does just that.