The Child Who Never Spoke

She was a globetrotter, a bohemian, a romantic, a writer, a compulsive risk-taker, a contrarian.  Cristina Nehring did not want a child—least of all, a “special” child, a child considered 90% handicapped by the French state where the two of them presently reside. But after a wildfire love affair with a gorgeous, street-wise, articulate, under-educated and impecunious Greek waiter she met while on a travel assignment on the island of Crete, she found herself accidentally pregnant. Her Greek lover was gung-ho for the birth; Cristina was not. But after much deliberation—and many appeals from her near and dear ones not  to give birth under these precarious circumstances—she decided to play the cards she’d been dealt: she decided to have the baby, WTF.

But lo and behold : the baby—born in Paris—turned out to have Down Syndrome in a particularly intense form. Her father split. The man who had wanted to marry and start out with a child, refused to acknowledge his paternity in the hospital, repaired to Crete, changed his various addresses, e-mails and phone numbers—and essentially disappeared, leaving Cristina to tend their infant girl alone and without any financial support in a city that was not her own.

But the miracle? Cristina learned everything precious she knows from this small disabled girl. And so can the world. That is why the book is sub-titled “23 ½ Lessons”—chapter by chapter Cristina relates what “Eurydice” (a Greek name, pronounced Yur-i-di-see) shows her and shows the world. The Child Who Never Spoke is at once a page-turner, an adventure tale, a course on  strong living and a Valentine.

Reviews

“One of the most graceful, tender and wise books I have ever read.”

–Christina Hoff Sommers, Senior Fellow Emeritus, American Enterprise Institute

“Yes, there are lessons to be taken from these pages, hard-won lessons wrung from Cristina Nehring’s ongoing odyssey as the single mother of a Down syndrome child and spun into lyric wisdom. But The Child Who Never Spoke: 23 ½ Lessons in Fragility is more than a guidebook to the uses and unexpected gifts of adversity. It is a love story, an adventure tale, an impetuous travelog, and a suspenseful medical saga (you can almost hear the hospital beeps in the background, the shuffle of footsteps down the halls) borne along by Nehring’s buoyant breadth of spirit and the unbreakable bond with her daughter Eurydice. And the writing! So elegant and intimate. It’s like hearing from a cherished friend after way too long.”

–James Wolcott, author of the memoir Lucking Out and the essay collection Critical Mass

“In 2009 Cristina Nehring’s brilliant first book, A Vindication of Love, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review.  An important new voice had appeared in American letters. Then just as suddenly Nehring seemed to disappear. Now unexpectedly from Paris comes a heartbreaking and tender memoir, The Child Who Never Spoke, that explains her years of silence. These “lessons in fragility” tell of Nehring’s unexpected pregnancy and birth of a “special child,” a baby girl with Down’s syndrome in its most extreme form. Forthright, profound, and passionate, this new book is also a vindication of love. Although it tells a story full of sorrow, The Child Who Never Spoke is a not a sad book but a profound and joyous testament to the love between a mother and daughter.”

–Dana Gioia, California poet laureate and author of Can Poetry Matter?

“A colorful, harrowing, engrossing account of mothering in extremis by one of the world’s last bohemians and true free spirits. Nehring has a lot to teach the rest of us about finding adventure and joy during times of darkness and crisis.”

–Katie Roiphe, author of In Praise of Messy Lives and editor of Janet Malcolm: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

“Cristina Nehring is an extraordinary writer and this memoir tells an extraordinary story – vividly and bewitchingly.  We all live among families with special needs children, but we have never read anything as intimate, revealing and celebratory about them  as this page-turner of a book.”

–Helen Epstein, Getting Through It: A Year of Cancer during Covid and Children of the Holocaust.

“We try to control things. We can’t. And how we respond to that conundrum depends on how much we’re willing to learn. In The Child Who Never Spoke, Cristina Nehring tells us what happened when she, a nomadic romantic with a “robust contempt” for the very notion of parenting, got thrown a curveball as big as an asteroid: an accidental pregnancy and a daughter with Down Syndrome. Hers is a story about losing freedom and gaining wisdom, yes, but what’s miraculous is that Nehring presents that saga (with prose that glows like a Parisian summer night) as a romp: in spite of the serious struggles that she and Eurydice have faced along the way, the book is a veritable banquet of verve, a tale of two big-hearted survivors who surrender to the currents of love.”

— Jeff Gordinier, author of Hungry and X Saves the World

“Anyone who writes as well as Cristina Nehring doesn’t need to be told that her prose is pure gold. Like a fine painting, or aged Scottish malt, she succeeds by avoiding all of the usual pretentious mistakes that drive me bonkers. Incredibly thrifty use of words/brushstrokes: not a trace of self-pity or showiness. I’m in awe of her talent.”

-Rob Kay, parent of Jordan Kay, with Down Syndrome, and charity trustee

“Journalist, scholar, romantic, Cristina Nehring found her life taking an unexpected turn when, in her mid-30s, she gave birth to a child with severe Down Syndrome. Nehring’s startling and poetic memoir of the first eight years of Eurydice’s life is a compelling story–filled with anguish, laughter, adventures in and out of hospitals, and unvarnished observations about the joys and pains of unconditional love. Those who seek to know what makes us human should read and ponder this beautiful book.”

–Daphne Patai, author, among other books, of What Price Utopia? Essays on Ideological Policing, Feminism and Academic Affairs 

“If by reading a book you could become a slightly better human being, then this one might do it. At least it will remind you of what a wondrous adventure being a human can be. And how much that will depend on your ability and courage to embrace the challenges that inevitably come with it. Cristina Nehring has written a beautiful, moving, and I dare say edifying, tale of what her relentless embracing of Eurydice, ‘a unique, resplendent, radiant, irreplicable, individual human being’, has brought not only to her, but to anyone reading this gem of a book.”

–Goran Rosenberg–one of Sweden’s best-known journalists and authors. His childhood memoir, A Brief Stop on the Road to Ausschwitz, won the Swedish August Prize in 2012 and was awarded the Prix du Meilleur livre étranger in 2014.

“There is so much danger and love packed into this slender memoir. It’s like reading Bukowski or Hunter S. Thompson. But it’s a woman living them, with a small child, and so much more at stake. I was always worried for her and rooting for her and in the end incredibly inspired by her. In every dark place she finds love.”

–Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men and podcast director at New York Magazine

“Not for the faint of heart—a true adventurer accomplishes amazing feats and encounters truly harrowing situations. Nehring turns her heart inside out with her prodigious love for her daughter.”

–Sandra McElwee, author of Who’s the Slow Learner? A Chronicle of Inclusion and Exclusion and mother of Sean McElwee, Down Syndrome star of the TV series Born This Way.

“The narrator of Cristina Nehring’s The Child Who Never Spoke: 23 ½ Lessons in Fragility is a woman determined to live on her own terms — free to pursue intellectual, creative and erotic adventure, until the unexpected intervenes: an unplanned daughter with exceptional needs. Over the course of twenty-three (and a half) short, heart-punching chapters, Nehring delivers to the reader the delight of getting to know her darling, exuberant daughter, and a serious meditation on what makes life most meaningful.”

 —Brian Morton author of Starting Out in the Evening and Tasha

“In The Child Who Never Spoke, Cristina Nehring trades her life as a “romantic, a nomad, a solitary” for the ultimate act of partnership: motherhood. Though her dive into domestic life is full of seemingly cruel plot twists, Nehring draws from mothering a series of insights so tender they take the reader’s breath away. By gently reframing the impositions and indignities of raising a ‘special needs’ child into the daily gift of living with “Dice,” Nehring reveals a girl alive with joy and unadulterated love, who will leap into readers’ hearts as indelibly as she leapt into her mother’s.”

–Heather Harpham, author of Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After