Fighting Back

In this Australian story, 17-year-old Anna Duncan is on her way home from a successful karate tournament with her not quite boyfriend at the wheel when she is involved in a terrible car crash. Written in a dramatic first person, present tense style, the novel takes us through the year following her accident; her slow and painful recovery, the encounters with insensitive doctors and her anger with the stranger who caused the accident. The friendships, family relationships and the romances are honestly and painfully drawn and Anna has to make some difficult decisions. There are some of the cliches of literature dealing with disability: the popular, athletic girl who now has to forgo her ambition to be a karate champion, her joy when she can throw away her wheelchair because at least she can walk. But there is no neat, happy ending and this is a revealing and intelligent account of a young woman who is learning that her life will never be the same again.