Double Take: A Memoir by Kevin Michael Connolly

Right...so I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Kevin Michael Connolly's memoir was that I connected with his need--and his journey--to figure out some of life's big questions. That and the fact that he is a good writer who is an overachiever with an inspiring story. 

The insides of the front and back covers of Double Take: A Memoir are plastered with more than 100 miniature, square, grayscale close-ups of people's faces as they stare at the photographer/author. The photographs are from a collection of more than 33,000 images that Connolly shot in various countries around the world of people staring at him--staring because Kevin Michael Connolly was born without legs and rides a skateboard to get around.

(In his travels outside the U.S., Connolly quickly discovered that people were prone to mistaking him for a homeless person or a beggar--often handing him money and refusing to take no for an answer--a reaction that repeatedly causes him much anger and then self-reflection). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When it was first handed to me I wasn't sure about the book's cover design, but it has grown on me since then--the pale green theme is calming despite what can in some ways be a difficult story to read (Amazon only offers this cover in the Kindle version). I furthermore like the size of the book, the thin, off-white paper that feels like recycling to the touch, and the enlarged black and white photos (of people staring) on the chapters' cover pages. The chapters themselves are short, well-arranged little anecdotes that tell the story of Connolly's unique life and perspective.

My first impression of the writing in Double Take: A Memoir was that Connolly is a good writer/storyteller, especially in the first half of the book. He captures the innocence of his childhood in way that made me laugh out loud at times, while at the same time subtly depicting some of the challenges that a no-legged child might face growing up in a world that expects him or her to have legs. I was struck by how much I felt I knew Connolly after reading the first couple of chapters and how much I related to the experiences he described. Aside from the occasional mention of lacking legs, he does not depict himself or come across as "handicapped" in his stories. Take, for example, his youthful excitement at getting to pick out white hightops with black streaks--the kind all the kids are wearing--to go with the prosthetic legs of which he would soon be availed. 

Kevin Michael Connolly has accomplished a great many things in his 25 short years of life (the author was born in 1985). He tried and failed, tried and failed--trials and tribulations that everybody has, only harder, for what in the first half of the book seemed like purely physical reasons but evolved into emotional reasons in the latter half of the book.

The first major accomplishment is that, after discovering a penchant for ski racing thanks to the undying support of his ever-so-colorful dad and a self-proclaimed group of Bridger Bowl, Montana "dirtbags," Connolly was invited to compete in the Mono-skier Cross at the 2006 Winter X Games--and he took 2nd place! (Skier cross is serious, by the way--five or so competitors simultaneously rocket through the same course, over big jumps, rollers, and banked turns--most definitely the stuff of which gnarly crashes are made.)

Then, after winning his X-Games silver medal, he took the prize money and traveled around the world (on his skateboard, which, in the spirit of his father's penchant for MacGyvering utilitarian inventions to support his son's perambulation, Connolly discovered to be his most effective mode of transport), to pursue a project that consisted of photographing, from his diminutive stature, tens of thousands of people staring down at him. And then of course by the age of 25, he published this captivating memoir. I have to admit I found myself pretty darn envious of Kevin Michael Connolly while reading his book, if that hasn't come across in the post already.

The latter half of Double Take is the story of Connolly's soul-searching trip to countries including Czech Republic, Croatia, Iceland, Japan, France, China, Romania, England, and Bosnia, to name a few. We meet his Kiwi girlfriend, Beth, with whom he travels part of the time, and share the awkward experiences he has with the people he meets. At this point the book gets rather introspective, as Connolly tries to come to terms with his reactions to people's reactions to him. He spends a good deal of time pondering his photo project, which he comes to understand as a therapeutic way to vent his own frustrations, and then questions the value of doing so at the expense of other people.

If there was an overarching realization at the end of the book, I missed it. Suffice it to say that the book ends when an emotional Connolly arrives back home among the supportive and influential people he knows and loves, people who see him for who he is--himself.

He ends the Epilogue like this:

"So maybe the reason I've been so frustrated at times by the question What the hell happened to you? is because it's simply the wrong one to pose. It focuses too much on a physical circumstance based on a singular point in time, rather than on all of the influences and characters that followed. ...Perhaps Where the hell did you come from? Is what we all should be asking."