Department of Mental Retardation

by Daniel Trask

Told in the first person, DMR tells the story of a recent college graduate's first six months in the real world, working as a direct caregiver within the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. During the six month period, John works in two group homes, both composed of four people, or as they are referred to in the department, Individuals. John's duties include helping the individuals with bathing, dressing, medication, eating, and recreational excursions (although he devotes very little time to this last activity). Confronted with the horrific pasts and current conditions of the individuals, John is forced to learn some terrible things about the world--things he would've preferred to have never known. When John encounters an incident of sexual abuse perpetrated against an individual by one of his fellow direct caregivers, he realizes he has a choice to make--a choice of whether to respond, a choice of whether to change his own thinking and prejudices, a choice of whether what he has stumbled upon is really abuse at all.

319 pages, Paperback

Published April 28, 2008

About the author

Daniel Trask was born in Brockton, Massachusetts in 1982. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in biology from UMass Amherst in 2006, Daniel worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation for six months.

Reviews

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author stopped in Milwaukee, on his book tour I think, at the performance space where I was a houseguest — thanks Celeste! thanks Qilo for sending me to Celeste! — probably yesterday. Unfortunately I left Milwaukee the day before yesterday so I missed it, but I read the house copy of the novel. It's a first novel second novel, oops, and could be more polished, and a rewritten ending, not that it ends the wrong way but the way it's written is unsatisfying and I think a bit more rewriting would fix it up. More important, though, is the author's sensitive awareness and close attention that show in every page. The details are rich and feel right. The characters, who are hard to identify with, are real and lovingly remembered. The implicit politics are worked through and go well beyond what a thoughtless "pc" position would imply. If he stops in your town go shake his hand and give him something.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel Trask's DMR is a skillful, amusing and often profound novel about a ticklish subject—the care of mentally disabled adults at the Massuchussets Department of Mental Retardation, the organization from which the book takes its title. There are numerous pitfalls that a book like this can sink into, and Trask sidesteps all of them. He doesn't work so safely in his treatment as to be sterile, and neither does he offend. More importantly, DMR never surrenders to the temptation to make the Individuals (as decency currently terms the mentally handicapped) come off as wacky and slapstick in their challenges. This book isn't Crazy People; there is no character who riffs on a variety of "howdy-do" gags. There's no cross-eyed savant with the quirky insights of Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys, and any comparison to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest falls flat. The narrator's experiences are original, and there is a flabby truthfulness in the way they're recounted.

[Chess via Email · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it again for a lecture on Monday at Gordon College.