There are very few, if any, memoirs about growing up with a cleft lip and/or palate. I suspect this is because cleft-affected people are often embarrassed about their facial differences and don't want to draw attention to them. Karl Schonborn breaks this silence with his memoir, Cleft Heart: Chasing Normal.

Schonborn was born in 1943, with extensive facial clefts that affected his gums, hard and soft palates, and upper lip. As a baby he had the standard treatments of the time; he was fed with an eyedropper-like device until he was big enough to have the first of several reconstructive surgeries. As is generally the case with clefts, his surgeon was not able to completely erase Schonborn's facial differences, and even after multiple surgeries his asymmetrical facial features, speech and dental problems, and painful Eustachian tube issues remained. Moreover, he was unable to participate in sports due to a suspected heart defect. He was bullied on the playground and worried that he'd never find love or be accepted as "normal". All these things fueled Schonborn's determination to succeed. To compensate for his speech issues, he fought to excel in debating, and eventually attended Ivy League schools. His hatred of bullying led him to a career as a sociologist specializing in conflict resolution.

Schonborn's narrative drags in places (particularly during the section on his long hitchhiking journey through Europe), but on the whole his story is serviceably told. The cleft aspect is only one part of the narrative. I have the impression that in his book he's really addressing his children and grandchildren regarding their family history (including his and his wife's courtship story, and a few sad family secrets), rather than the wider world.

I hope that this book inspires other cleft-affected individuals to tell their stories.

Please note: although I won this book through LTER, I never received it. The publishing company went out of business shortly after this book's release. I bought it as an e-book through Amazon. ( )

I resisted reading this book for months - not because it was unappealing to me but because it arrived in e-book format rather than the promised proper book. I find there is nothing like the feel and the smell of a real book to make me look forward to reading it - old school, I guess.

Cleft Heart was neither great or bad - it is an interesting enough autobiographical story of a boy with a disability. It traces his life as a child, as a student and as an adult. I preferred the portions of childhood and adulthood. The rest was all right. ( )

The book works as a memoir or at the outside autobiographical fiction, as a novel it falls apart. Picking out themes and dropping them with out much closure. And for a man from a graduate of an Ivy League school, I found the writing bland and facile. The plot of a boy growing up in the fifties and sixties was interesting, but it could've been more heart felt. The first theme is about a boy growing up with a cleft pallet and the bullying he receives and what happens after, set mostly in Palo Alto, California. ( )

I received a copy of this book from the LibrayThing Early Readers program.

When I read the first few pages, I thought I was hooked and looked forward to a compelling read. The story is autobiographical and starts with his childhood, plagued with bullying, teasing, and the insecurities of being different. The childhood portion was indeed compelling. But then the story progressed to a rather unexciting stint at Yale followed by a travelogue of his trip around the world. The last few chapters were interesting, but the middle of the book was lacking. Overall rating = ** 1/2 stars ( )

Karl captured the effects of coming to maturity. His descriptions of Yale, travel, and West Philly are a match for my experience. I think his discussions with his father and siblings were most meaningful and something which I have not seen before. I hung on every word.