Mar 9

Mar 9 Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation

Author: Camonghne Felix
Publisher: One World
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

An epic meditation on loving yourself in the face of heartbreak, from the acclaimed author of Build Yourself a Boat, longlisted for the National Book Award

When Camonghne Felix goes through a monumental breakup, culminating in a hospital stay, everything—from her early childhood trauma and mental health to her relationship with mathematics—shows up in the tapestry of her healing. In this exquisite and raw reflection, Felix repossesses herself through the exploration of history she'd left behind, using her childhood "dyscalculia"—a disorder that makes it difficult to learn math—as a metaphor for the consequences of her miscalculations in love. Through reckoning with this breakup and other adult gambles in intimacy, Felix asks the question: Who gets to assert their right to pain?

Dyscalculia negotiates the misalignments of perception and reality, love and harm, and the politics of heartbreak, both romantic and familial.

TL;DR Review

Dyscalculia is a hard-hitting, strikingly original little book about a messy breakup amid the author’s lifelong struggle with trauma and mental illness. It’s a very quick read that will definitely make for a strong reread.

For you if: You like memoirs written in vignettes, and/or prose by poets.

Full Review

Dyscalculia had so many incredible blurbs on the back (Raven Leilani, Deesha Philyaw, Kiese Laymon!) that I simply had to pick it up. It’s a very quick read — only two hours on audio at 1x — but man, it packs a big punch.

Dyscalculia is a condition caused by trauma that results in an intense struggle with math. This book is a memoir written in vignettes in which Felix uses the poetic nature of math (and her childhood dyscalculia) to ground her experiences with childhood abuse, a lifelong struggle to get an accurate diagnosis of her mental illness, the implosion of a relationship, and making it through to the other side. It’s raw and unapologetic, and it turns on a dime between humor and devastation (to great effect).

“Enjoyed” is a strange word to use with this book because of its heavy nature, but it’s excellent. The audiobook is read by the author and very good, but I recommend listening along as you read on the page; by listening only, you’d lose most of the effect of the vignettes and, by extension, the poetic power of Felix’s prose.

Because this is so short, I read it in one sitting, but it’s definitely one of those books that begs a reread (or two or five).