BOOK: You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, And Forgiveness
AUTHOR: Heather Sellers
GRADE: B+
After spending almost twenty years believing she was crazy, being shunned by people for her alleged aloofness, and avoiding social situations out of fear of running into long time friends and not being able to recognize them, Heather Sellers finally stumbles upon the incredibly rare diagnosis that explains it all. Prosopagnosia: Face blindness. Despite her perfect vision, Sellers can not differentiate one face from another without external clues such as gait, hair, glasses etc; she is literally face blind.
Were Sellers's memoir focused solely around the emotional complexities of her illness and its ramifications, it would have been a fascinating journey; but what really transforms the story is the concurrent explorations into her mother's mental illness and her failing marriage to a lovely man with loving children. Sellers struggles with reconciling the deficiencies of her parents with her illness: were they related or genetically passed down? Her mother's diagnosis of schizophrenia only adds to her paranoia over her own mental state - especially prior to an actual diagnosis, while her father's constant disappearance forces her to question the permanence of anything - or anyone. Sellers immerses herself into research on correlations between schizophrenia and face blindness without coming up with anything; which only adds to her frustration. The strain of dealing with her family and illness becomes too much for her marriage to sustain and divorce ensues.
"You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know" is a page turner and brain scrambler. It will provoke thoughts that will stay with you for days and make you question how you see things. I highly recommend Heather Sellers' memoir to all - especially those interested in little known illnesses such as hers.
