As I think everyone in America knows by now, The Blind Side tells the story of Michael Oher, a homeless kid from a rough Memphis neighborhood who was taken in and "saved" by a rich, white family when he was in high school. The world had sort of given up on him but as it turns out, Michael is genetically predisposed to play left tackle - and becomes a high-school football star, eventually moving on to Ole Miss and the Baltimore Ravens. I hadn't seen the movie and decided to read the book first, before it came out on DVD, after hearing that the film version left out the contributions that other Memphis families made and instead chose to focus on the Tuohys, his main support system.
But, as it turns out, the book version isn't that much different than the movie - it simplifies some details and situations (because of time constraints, I assume) and leaves out pretty much all the football history, but the personal story is more or less the same. The Tuohys are pretty much the stars of the book too - and from what I've seen since of real-life clips, it seems accurate that they did indeed become Michael's family, with now five members instead of the previous four.
Where the book differs, really, is in the football analysis. I didn't realize The Blind Side would be quite so much about the game of football - which seems silly in retrospect as the subtitle of the book is "Evolution of a Game." Lewis spends multiple chapters explaining how the left tackle became the second-most important player in a football game - and went from anonymous grunt to high-paid star. I like football so I did enjoy learning that perspective, but I think if you're looking for a simple, heartwarming story, those chapters will seem endless.
Generally, I liked the book but I did think that it portrayed Michael Oher unfairly. For being the heart of the book, he's a pretty absent figure. Apparently this is because he was reluctant to speak with Lewis for any significant period of time but in the book, I think it comes across as condescending. The book is supposed to be about football - and how this one particular player sheds light on a greater trend - but I think it's just as much about how this family opened their generous, white hearts and saved this kid who was going nowhere. It's all about what they did for him; it's very little about what Michael Oher did for himself. And while I doubt he could have done it without them, it's also a little ridiculous to suggest, as The Blind Side does, that nothing was done with his own agency. (Which, incidentally, Oher seems to agree with in this Sports Illustrated article, even though he hasn't read the book or seen the movie.)
A lot of that was certainly the author's choice. In using dialogue, Lewis chooses to record the characters' manners of speaking - and as a result, all of the black people in the novel sound so uneducated. I also thought that Lewis manipulated perception with his use of metaphor. For example, on page 259, he likens Michael to an animal: "Like a zoo director discussing a crazed rhinoceros with its trainer, he said, ‘You got to get down here and find him.’” His (white) football coach is the zoo director and his (white) guardian is the trainer, but he's an animal.
But, on the bright side, it was announced at the end of April that Michael Oher will publish a memoir, I Beat the Odds My Amazing Journey from Foster Care to the NFL and Beyond, with the help of co-author and SI editor Don Yaeger. So in February 2011, he'll get to tell his story his way.
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