Book review of You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers

Imagine what it must be like to be surrounded by strangers, never recognizing the face of your spouse, the face of your children, your co-workers and students, or even your own features when revealed in a photo or in film? At first, it sounds amusing. Most of us have trouble remembering names and faces so this couldn’t be that big of a deal. Right? But amusement quickly turns into a nightmare, losing your son in a grocery store, ignoring people you’ve worked with for years, walking past your students as if they are strangers. Add to that an unreliable, alcoholic father with a nasty temper, and a paranoid, schizophrenic mother, and you have the life and times of Heather Sellers. Her memoir is titled You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know (Riverhead Books), and it is her true story of face blindness, and the way her world has been shaped since childhood.