A must-read for those with nonverbal autism, their caregivers, and anyone wishing to learn more about the condition.
A 13-year-old boy with nonverbal autism who can’t follow basic directions learns how to communicate, upending his life.
Kedar (Ido in Autismland, 2012) is an autism advocate who communicates and writes by typing on an iPad or keyboard and pointing to letters on a board. This book is one of the few novels by an author with nonverbal autism. The tale’s teenage protagonist, Anthony, lives in two worlds: the “Autismland” of his mind, where he can escape for a sensory high afforded him because of his condition, and the realm where everyone else resides—full of baby talk and repetitive drills that specialists employ for his so-called therapy. When Anthony reaches adolescence, a family friend tells his mom about a woman who claims to teach autistic kids to communicate by typing. Anthony’s parents are skeptical, but his older brother, Mark, who has always suspected that his sibling is more intelligent than he gets credit for, insists they give him a letter board. Even though the book’s title contrasts the world of autism to the neurotypical one, this story deftly explores two other realms, offering rich details: Anthony’s frustrating existence before he can communicate and his intriguing life after he gets the letter board. His life pre-board is full of 40 hours of tedious behavioral analysis and therapy every week. His condition causes him to “stim,” or self-stimulate utilizing a repetitive behavior like hand-flapping. Once he starts using the board to express himself, he can order from a menu, write in full sentences, and even make jokes at the expense of his therapists, who continue to doubt his abilities. The engrossing and highly informative tale is smoothly told in the third person from Anthony’s point of view except for a few chapters that switch abruptly. For example, the story shifts to the perspective of Natasha, one of his supervisors, in “Skeptical,” despite Anthony’s not being physically present during this part of the novel.
A must-read for those with nonverbal autism, their caregivers, and anyone wishing to learn more about the condition.Pub Date: July 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73229-150-8
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Double Buck Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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