By Fiona Capp
The Many Ways of Seeing
Nick Gleeson with Peter Bishop
The Many Ways of Seeing. By Nick Gleeson.
Ventura, $29.99
Whether he is recalling the joys of going mushrooming with his father or the smell of mandarins when he was told of his mother's death, this unorthodox memoir vividly demonstrates the "many ways of seeing" through touch, smell and sound that a blind person experiences. While Nick Gleeson has been more adventurous than most of us – he has climbed to Everest base camp and represented Australia in the Paralympics – his focus is on the drama of ordinary life. One of the most moving episodes from his childhood is the first time he went to the milk bar on his own. The book is written in collaboration with Peter Bishop, mentor to many Australian writers, as a kind of dialogue. The form makes perfect sense given that, as Gleeson puts it, "everything I do in my life is a collaboration".