"The affliction that stole my vision, or at least a big chunk of it, did so as I slept," writes Frank Bruni (Born Round) in his memoir The Beauty of Dusk. The New York Times columnist was 52 in 2017 when he experienced the first hint that something was wrong with his right eye: he tried to pour water into his French press but missed. A neuro-ophthalmologist told him the cause was a rare form of stroke known as NAION, or non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. The book documents Bruni's ordeal, including the emotional toll of encountering a disability "long before old age" and the damage it brought to his psyche and to his relationship with his partner, Tom. Bruni also includes graphic descriptions of the treatment, including an injection straight into his eye that felt like "a splash of acid delivered with a heavyweight's punch," and philosophical discourses on what it means truly to see.
Bruni devotes much of his book to others who overcame challenges of aging or illness--from a Vegas restaurant manager whose eyeballs consistently shake, making his vision blurry, to a District of Columbia circuit court judge who refuses to let his blindness derail a distinguished juridical career. Some of Bruni's epiphanies are obvious: that the ambitious should occasionally interrupt their pursuit of power to appreciate the splendors all around is not an original insight. But this book is a welcome reminder, despite the inevitability of dusk in each person's life, of how "enriching and beautiful that dusk can be" when one examines it closely. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer