A moving study of stuttering...remarkable -- Helen Davies * Sunday Times * Words Fail Us is a deep dive into disfluency, exploring its history, its science, its politics and its profile in a fluency-obsessed world. Jonty Claypole's book is timely, thoughtful, rich in fact and personal anecdote, and looks to a more enlightened, speech-diverse future. -- David Mitchell Comprehensive, open-minded, thoughtful and wise ... a liberating book. -- Colm Toibin Words Fail Us is one of those rare books - a piece of writing and thinking I hadn't realised I'd been waiting for until I read it. In this thoughtful and moving exploration of disfluency Jonty Claypole has written both a wonderfully engaging study on the history, causes and societal perceptions of speech disorders and an acutely argued call to arms, not just for the wider acceptance of communication diversity but also for an embracing of the creativity and originality of thought it can inspire. -- Owen Sheers Humane, thought-provoking, and rich in experiential detail. * Guardian * I would recommend [ Words Fail Us] to any fluent person trying to understand the tribulations of disfluency, and to any disfluent person who feels that he or she is enduring them alone ... Kendrick Lamar, Lewis Carroll, Somerset Maugham and Henry James are just a few of the writers whose stammers Claypole believes enriched their work. In Words Fail Us he has given us another instance of this fine tradition. * The Times * Claypole, who has a stutter, argues that pathological "disfluencies" should instead be understood and - the more radical claim - celebrated. Claypole thinks it is no coincidence that some of the greatest verbal artists - Henry James, Kendrick Lamar - have struggled with speech. The book doubles as a polemic against fluency: by unlearning our reflexive reverence for it, we can appreciate our disfluencies, and the "diversity and innovation they bring to human thought and language". * New Statesman * Incredibly valuable, and a noteworthy addition to the bookshelves of any speech-language pathologist, graduate student, researcher, or human being who would like to broaden their perspective of the power of the full spectrum of language. * Journal of Fluency Disorders *
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