As a child, Sandra Gail Lambert had polio, which required two surgeries that left her ambulatory but dependent on leg braces. By the time she was 35, she needed a wheelchair and had to quit her job managing a bookstore. A Certain Loneliness is Lambert's wry, unstinting look at a life spent dealing with chronic pain and having a visibly imperfect body. While she's a committed feminist, she recognizes "the damage of growing up without ever having been sexually objectified. How can I explain this?"
She explains beautifully in her book's 29 essays, which have no obvious organizing principle; several pieces flash back to childhood touchstones, including the time an invitation to dance was revoked the moment the asker saw her leg braces. A Certain Loneliness has the feel of not so much a memoir as a travelogue: Lambert's body is the topography of her everyday travels. She's a sobering guide.
Longer pieces--about Lambert's first plane trip in 20 years, about her solo kayaking voyage--seem to promise big events that never arrive but aren't missed, as every page is taut with potential drama: Will she make it through the essay without a fall, without embarrassment, without having to abort mission due to debilitating physical pain? Lambert, the author of the novel The River's Memory, won't become a captive in her wheelchair-friendly Florida home any time soon. As she says about another kayaking trip, "Tomorrow... I'll hurt from this. Today, however, I know who I am." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer