Rebuilding a Brick Wall is a must read for anyone who has experienced, directly or indirectly, the effects of brain injury. Which means pretty well everyone, and most of us don’t know nearly enough about the condition: as the compilation of statistics at the end of the book show, every 3 minutes someone in Canada sustains a brain injury. That adds up to one heck of a large number of people. Our friends. Our family members.

 

With the help of Susanne Gauthier, Evan Wall tells the story of the brain injury he sustained in a car accident, and relates his subsequent physical, mental, and emotional learning and relearning about himself, and through his experiences readers learn a great deal they need to learn about the internal and external impact of such a debilitating injury.

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Gauthier does a remarkable job of handling the prose, structure, and presentation of the material related to Wall’s story. Gauthier’s voice never over-rides or intrudes, but rather, because she is a fine writer herself, provides a consistency of tone, and a clarity in the information that might not have otherwise been achieved.

 

We follow Wall’s transition from being a somewhat cocky, ego-driven young line backer finishing high school in Shellbrook, and he’s the cliché of youth personified, a big fish in small town who believes he is destined for the big bad world. He is also a partier, a scrapper, a good friend and a smart, as well as smart ass, guy. He illustrates the hubris of youth, the sense of invincibility, and the necessary confidence that propel young people full tilt towards their goals before life humbles them a bit, takes them down a peg or two. But for Wall, unlike for most teenagers, this was not a gradual process.

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Wall doesn’t beat himself up over the circumstances of the accident; he doesn’t shirk his responsibility for what has happened; he doesn’t dwell on or seek apologies for the kind of young man he was, into fighting and drinking and being a "shit disturber". (He is also a loyal friend and family member and has a great sense of humour.) With Gauthier’s assistance, Wall provides an honest, candid view of his experiences; never is he reduced to self-pity.

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The opening of the book—the before—establishes, as in a novel, character, and setting, which enables the reader to enter and experience Wall’s world comes from, and to meet and like Wall himself as an affable, typical and atypical teenager. The world Wall comes from contributes so greatly to how he experiences what happens and how we understand it, as well as the many kinds of personal, community, and medical support he had after the accident. The “before” section shows readers what life is like in small Saskatchewan towns, where everyone knows each other, where everyone tends to put aside differences and helps each other in difficult times, comes to one another’s aid. The strength of Wall’s family, that extends to the strength of the community, and what the word community means is exemplified fully in the love and support Wall found.

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Now, after years of huge and dramatic change, Wall looks ahead. He gives to others. He himself is speaking for a different community now, a community we all need to learn from about how we treat people who are damaged for any number of reasons. Wall’s injuries are not just physical, though those are terrible enough; it is the added brain injury, which therefore affects his physical well-being. His voice, his taking for granted, as we all do, the attributes that define us.

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Wall is not being humble, he’s not wallowing in self-pity, he’s no longer motivated by bravado. His determination, established as a child, never to be a quitter, remains his guiding principle, though the context has changed drastically. His determination, self-reliance, self-sufficiency finds a form acquired, learned, adopted as a result of the car accident in which he was flung from the vehicle.

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The before and after pictures are bleak, and sad, but readers are more likely than Wall to flinch. His direct matter-of-fact tone affects readers deeply, and evokes compassion. We do not feel pity for this young man; we feel admiration in a situation where profound injury can be an unlikely catalyst.

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The picture on the front of the book is of a good-looking, confident young man with wisdom born of pain behind his direct gaze, the wisdom born of difficult, painful experience. Youth that is leaving youth behind as it realizes now that it is not invincible, but very much human.

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Building a brick wall is nowhere near as easy as it looks, as any bricklayer will tell you. It is far more skill-demanding than merely slapping on mortar between bricks and stacking them one on top of another. Skill, trial and error, and intense labour are required to make a strong, stable wall. Now imagine the difficulties to be encountered attempting to repair a brick wall that has been seriously damaged at its centre. (Google “repair a brick wall” and see what comes up!)

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www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5881023

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