The Point of Vanishing

Starred review from June 15, 2015
How losing eyesight in one eye made a man see more clearly. Following a freak accident that left him without sight in one eye, the world Axelrod had envisioned for himself after graduating from Harvard suddenly didn't seem to matter. Nothing felt concrete-not the world around him, his future plans, or even his own physical sense of being. A year in Italy and two cross-country trips still left him searching for meaning. He retreated to a small cabin deep in the woods of Vermont, a place far enough away from the noise of the world that he could hear himself think. Time slowed down to a snail's pace as he wandered the forests on snowshoes, through the deep muck of mud season and the intense green of summer. Axelrod lyrically captures the essence of nature as he ponders his own self-worth and purpose in life. After his first winter, when summer returned, "the green was a revelation, a prodigal son-a color that had once existed, gone missing in the snows and miraculously returned. It opened itself through the hazed meadows, through the blue-green hills, through the reflections in the pewter green ponds; it deepened the blue in the pines, gilded the light off the streams, and relented only towards dusk, yielding to the slow antics of the fireflies, to the stars overhead...." By reflecting on the scenery around him and examining memories of his childhood, his school friends, and a special girl he knew in Italy, Axelrod slowly gained a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive. In his first book, the author pushes beyond the boundaries and safety nets of the modern world and opens a doorway to feelings and experiences many long for but never encounter. His writing is a balm for world-weary souls. A vibrant, honest, and poetic account of how two years of solitude surrounded by nature changed a man forever.

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Starred review from August 1, 2015
In the mid-1990s, Axelrod was a junior at Harvard when he suffered a mishap during a basketball pickup game and lost the sight in one of his eyes. That event broke his life in twobefore and after. This elegant, questioning memoir details that moment and events prior to it, but mostly it achingly limns Axelrod's two years living alone in a ramshackle cabin in the Vermont woods. His writingwhether describing an aspect of the wilderness around him or noting the first lesson of solitude: everything really is your fault is lush and savory, exact in its intent to document just how Axelrod regained the ability to feel that quiet of already belonging. That he allows the reader to participate in this journey, from whatever distance, is more than a pleasureit's an honor. A Rockefeller grant had taken Axelrod for a year to Bologna, and there he met the hauntingly beautiful Milena, and the memoir flashes between his life in the woods, avoiding even looking in a mirror in his cabin, and the love he shared and ultimately lost with Milena. By their very nature, memoirs speak of the past. Axelrod so adroitly and wisely re-creates the youngster he was that readers forget the passing of time, hearing only the voice of sorrow, longing, and determination. This memoir is a keeper, touching and eloquent, full of hard lessons learned. Readers will hope for more from first-time-author Axelrod.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)