Epilepsy in Lit: Because You'll Never Meet Me

I just had a very emotional experience at the hands of a novel: Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas. I suspect many of you have had the same feeling with a book before.

Because You'll Never Meet Me, besides being a cool story about two boys living a continent apart, deals heavily with disability, and specifically epilepsy.

The main character Ollie doesn't necessarily have epilepsy as we know it. Instead, he is allergic to electricity. His pen-pal Moritz lives in Germany and, besides being blind and having super awesome echolocation abilities, has an electronic heart. Thus, the two can never meet.

The story follows the friendship of these two disabled boys and their inevitable bromance.

Like most science fiction(y) stories, Because You'll Never Meet Me presents an exaggerated, possibly fantastical version of reality. But in doing so, Thomas address disability in a creative and original way.

To paraphrase Orson Scott Card, "science fiction presents us with a truer truth." By presenting an exaggerated version of epilepsy, Thomas gets to the real heart of the condition. For example, Ollie's condition is both reactive and active. He not only seizes when confronted by electricity, but his presence seems to mess with electricity too. Thomas writes,

"I fear that you are just as likely to make the world tremble as it is to make you seize." 

While to Ollie this is a literal scenario, the remark does in fact strike at a "true truth" about the condition: that in having epilepsy, you not only experience seizures, but your seizures affect the people and world around you as well.


Despite the science fiction nature, Thomas also writes so accurately about the experience of having a seizure that I am tempted to think she or someone near to her has experienced the sensation.

These two passages in particular made me think yes! That's exactly what it's like!!:

"'Waf gongan?' I said. It could have been right then, or it could have been minutes later. Sparks were in my eyes, rattling my teeth in my ears."

"...like when I'm surrounded by electricity and wishing I could stop a seizure that doesn't give two tiny craps about my wishes."

Still in other scenes, the author drives right to the heart of what living with disability in general is like. Ollie mentions that "It's just easier to say I'm sick" while Moritz says that "Silence is harder to mock." Both of these seemingly simple observations speak to social reactions to disability. Specifically with epilepsy, it is often far easier for me to say I'm sick then to explain why I can't go to a specific bar or watch a certain movie. Similarly, it is easier to not speak about a disability because people can't make fun of you for something they aren't aware of.   

Overall, I highly recommend this book, not only for the insight into disability, but because the story is fun and the characters very memorable. 


I'll leave you with this:

"maybe...in the hopes of meeting you, I can learn to put with electricity. And all those electricities will learn to put up with me as well."

Buy the book on amazon here: Because You'll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas or support your local bookstore!