Brian Trapp w/ Laurie Frankel, RANGE OF MOTION

Director of disability studies at the University of Oregon, Brian Trapp, discusses his new novel Range of Motion, alongside novelist Laurie Frankel. Range of Motion is a tender, wrenching, and comic novel that follows two twin boys from infancy to the cusp of adulthood.

Twin A and Twin B. That’s what Michael and Sal’s neuroscientist father irreverently calls them. The boys are born moments apart, but baby Sal’s brain scan shows a bleed. He has severe cerebral palsy and intellectual disabilities.

Told through multiple perspectives—Gabe, the boys’ father; Hannah, their mother; and Michael—this debut novel follows the Mitchell family from the boys’ infancy to the cusp of adulthood as they all try to interpret what Sal, who speaks only eight words, is thinking and feeling. The twins’ upbringing in suburban Ohio is familiar and unfamiliar, ordinary and extraordinary, as this middle-class family navigates the challenges and rewards of nurturing a special-needs human with a killer dimple who is utterly and winningly himself: sweet, stubborn, mischievous, impenetrable, and above all, very funny.

Michael feels that he alone understands Sal and devotes himself to giving his brother a voice in the “normal” world until he grows up and can’t “hear” his twin anymore—his worst fear. Their mother, a teacher who has given up her career for caregiving, and their father, who is determined to succeed in his research, also struggle with the balance of sacrifice and duty and love, especially as Sal’s health deteriorates. Before Michael leaves for college, the twins spend a final week together at a summer camp for people with disabilities, and Sal does something that changes their lives forever.

Transforming perceptions of disability and interdependence through tender attention to detail, Range of Motion is wrenching, beautiful, and sharply comic.

Brian Trapp is director of disability studies at the University of Oregon, where he also teaches fiction and nonfiction and edits the Northwest Review. His work has been published in the Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Longreads, Brevity, and elsewhere. His essays have been listed as Notable in Best American Essays and anthologized in the Best of Brevity. He has received a Steinbeck Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Oregon Arts Fellowship, a Sewanee Writer’s Conference Borchardt Scholarship, a Tin House Summer Residency, and a Taft Fellowship from the University of Cincinnati, where he completed his PhD. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, with his twin brother, Danny.

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of five — going on six — novels. Her new one, Enormous Wings, will be out in May. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

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