Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination

Science journalist Dingfelder debuts with a piquant memoir about her quest to understand her prosopagnosia, or face blindness. She had long known she had difficulty remembering faces, but didn’t believe her deficits were severe until her 40s, when she started to reflect on some of the strange scrapes she’d gotten into (for instance, she once teased a stranger for his selections at the grocery store thinking the stranger was her husband). An online facial recognition test revealed she performed as well as “people who have been literally shot through the head,” prompting Dingfelder to participate in a series of formal perceptual and MRI tests to better understand her condition. They revealed she also couldn’t see depth or visualize images in her mind’s eye and had difficulty retaining detailed memories of past events. Dingfelder’s account of undergoing facial recognition training and learning to drive without depth perception benefits from her position as both a research subject with firsthand insight into living with neurodivergence and a scientific journalist capable of discussing the underlying neuroscience in accessible language. The zippy prose and humor will keep readers turning pages (after a radiologist compliments Dingfelder on how still she remained during an MRI, she writes, “There are many things I suck at, but I was born to play dead”). Readers will be enlightened and charmed in equal measure. Agent: Dara Kaye, WME. (June)