Oh my God, I don't want to say this is interminable, but it kind of was. I've been wanting to read it for ages, too - I've been keeping it aside for the Read Harder 2021 task about an own voices book on disability. I expected to love it. I did not love it. And I feel really bad about that! I can't honestly say it's punching down to dislike so much of it, given that this was written by a woman who became both blind and deaf at 19 months and even so learned English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Braille, and an alphabet sign. I mean clearly she's a genius, much cleverer than me. I just can't get on with her prose. Different time, different style and all that, but this book praises her writing to the skies, and compares the writing of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, as being much the inferior. I'm sorry, but I'd take Sullivan's prose every day of the week.

I don't think it helps that this book is cut into three parts. The first is Story of My Life proper, and in all fairness I did enjoy it. It is monstrously impressive - even without being blind and deaf, all those languages! And Keller comes across as consistently kind and decent and hardworking, and I liked her. It's the second section that wrecked this book for me: it's a selection of the letters she wrote as a child. It goes on forever, is enormously repetitive, and the style... it's like Anne Shirley ate candy floss for a month and then was sick all over the page. (Keller's purple prose continues into adulthood, but it's far improved from this.) If these letters weren't an important artifact in the history of education I'd say that were an argument for the destruction of juvenilia, because they could put a diabetic into coma. Yes, I'm a terrible person. I feel it right now I can tell you. Making fun of a child's writing is awful, but what I'm really making fun of is the editorial decision to include them... or to include so many, or such a selection. I understand they've been curated, but in them Keller comes across as so sugary and so saintly that she stops feeling like a real person. She really does. (And honestly: she doesn't feel real in Story either; I realise that she talks about challenges and difficulties there, but it's all so sweet and glossy, it puts my teeth on edge.)

It's the final section, consisting of letters and reports from Sullivan, where things really pick up and where Keller starts to come into focus for me. Sullivan describes an actual child. A girl who can be a spoilt brat, a loving sister, absolutely mad on animals, and yes, kind and generous to others. The picture is well-rounded, and ten times less flowery, and I tell you: that little girl who pinched people when they didn't let her steal food off their plates... that's the girl I wanted to read about. The person, not the shining example to humanity. That person was fascinating, and Sullivan's third of the book redeemed the whole thing for me.