I am a fan of Cynthia Voigt’s. I have read her Tillerman Family series several times through adolescence and beyond, and have always enjoyed her rich characterizations, realistic stories, and vivid description.

So, when I visited my favorite used bookstore last week, I picked up Izzy, Willy-Nilly, a book by Cynthia Voigt that I had never read before. I could not put it down.

Brief Plot Summary

The story opens with Izzy in a hospital, waking up after an automobile accident. Injuries to her right leg are severe, and result in amputation below the knee. We follow her long convalescence in the hospital, her physical therapy, her move back home, and eventually, her return to school.

As the story unfolds, we piece together Izzy’s life before the accident: she was a nice, popular, upper-class, attractive 15 year old girl, She hung out with three equally popular girls (all on the cheerleading squad). They spent their time gossiping about boys, makeup, and each other.

After the accident, Izzy wakes up into a different life, and at first, it is an uglier life than the one she led before. She no longer finds herself beautiful. Her three closest friends don’t drop by or call very much, and when they do, their visits are uncomfortable and distant. Izzy is crushed under waves of pity and guilt and falseness – false smiles, false expectations, false reassurance. However, not all the changes are bad. One girl, Rosamunde, turns out to be a new and better friend. Izzy begins to see the world, and the people around her, more clearly. She grows as a person, even as she experiences pain.

Comments

For anyone who wishes to see a physical disability from the inside, this is an excellent starting point. Izzy, Willy-Nilly takes you through the denial and depression, the confusion and helplessness. She shows you the pain of rearranging your dreams and hopes for the future. She shows the change in social fabric as friends disappear and others emerge, as the family knits closer in a way that is both reassuring and suffocating and embarrassing. She shows Izzy wonder if she will be desirable and lovable as a woman, or is that gone too? Sibling relationships change: her older brothers are angry and abnormally attentive, her little sister is jealous of the attention lavished on Izzy, and fearful that such a terrible accident could happen to anyone.

Voigt’s grasp of the details of having a physical disability is superb – Izzy can’t reach the wall phone, and must "jump" out of her wheelchair, grab the phone, and fall back. Once she has the receiver, she can’t dial it because the number pad is on the wall unit. The simple act of making a phone call, something she did all the time, without thinking, prior to her accident, is now a difficult, demanding task.

Izzy grows throughout the book, though her amputation is not portrayed as a "learning experience." That would trivialize her situation. Izzy loses a great deal when her leg is amputated – her dreams, her best friends, her self-image. But she gains as well – she has a new and piercing appreciation of beauty, both in the natural world and in other people. She is a better judge of human character: when she turns her new eyes on her old friends, she has a deeper understanding of their fears and personalities, even as they drift away from her.

As with all of Voigt’s books, Izzy, Willy-Nilly does not end on a euphoric, shiny-happy note. Instead, the ending is cautiously optimistic. Throughout the book and continuing past the ending, Izzy grows, becomes a different person – but perhaps the new Izzy is a better person than she was before. Izzy would put back her leg in an instant if she could, but the new life that unfolds before her is not all dark. There is hope, and growth, and joy, and friendship, even with a disability.

Conclusion

I highly recommend Izzy, Willy-Nilly if you are interested in experiencing a physical disability from the inside. Voigt provides thoughtful and complex, detailed and realistic insights into the life and mind of a newly disabled person.


Recommended: Yes