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Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of West Vancouver Memorial Library.
Jan 07, 2014SusannahElf rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
I really hesitated before opening this one because I loathed "Left Neglected" so very much. And some of the problems I had with that book were evident in this one. Maybe Genova's income as a neurologist and best-selling author make these moneyed characters appear realistic to her, but I'd have been more interested to see how a working class family would cope with an autistic child. I know lots of them through my work with special needs kids, and they for damn sure aren't throwing money at the problem hoping to "fix" their child. So the wisdom that the one mother gets to after 10 years (accept reality and enjoy the moments as the come, because autistic people are pretty interesting in their own unique ways), most of my parents have gained after the first shock. I also did not enjoy the parts of the book that were "in the voice" of the autistic boy. It is a mistake to use words to describe the thought processes of a non-verbal person. It puts more weight on the inability of an autistic person to express their thoughts, rather than on the essential un-knowability of how they think. You'd do as well writing in the voice of a wild animal (like Andrew Pyper did in that forest fire book where he "spoke" as a vengeful mother grizzly bear and looked pretty silly doing it...). I'm not saying that people with autism aren't humans, just that it's presumptuous to think that a non-autist can speak for them.