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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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