Some Just Clap Their Hands: Raising a Handicapped Child

The mother of a retarded child, Mantle writes of her own and other parents' experiences as they deal with the pain, confusion and sense of loss that changes their lives. What the presence of a mentally retarded child means in a family, how a marriage is affected and the relations with other siblings are told in terms of the dissolution of Mantle's first marriage and the problems of her second, and echoed in the accounts of others recorded in this candid, straightforward memoir. We learn of love that cannot be separated from anger and despair, of bleak societal milieus but also of the possibility of choice and options for special children of all ages. Mantle, a journalist, and her first husband, a wire-service photographer, lived with their retarded child in Moscow, Buenos Aires, Chicago. The author traces her ultimate attainment of a kind of peace, finds a possible answer to ""Why me?'' in relating the story of her daughter Victoria, now 18, and thereby enlightens us all. December 5