beccajreads's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
sad
fast-paced
5.0
I don't think any book has made me cry as much as this.
flobeulah's review
4.0
I have worked with autistic people for a while now and I love how much they challenge me to think outside the box and to see things from a different perspective.
But most of the autistic people I met are still in school.
It’s very tricky to imagine how their life will go when they finish school, when they have to go out into the ‘real world’, have families, have jobs, raise kids and so on.
This book is challenged me on so many different levels. I definitely recommend it!
But most of the autistic people I met are still in school.
It’s very tricky to imagine how their life will go when they finish school, when they have to go out into the ‘real world’, have families, have jobs, raise kids and so on.
This book is challenged me on so many different levels. I definitely recommend it!
myliteraryseaside's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
meemawreads's review
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
2.5
I’ve delayed reviewing this until I thought through my feelings about it. I think it comes down to 1) these people live in the UK and 2) the tag line “my mother, autism, and me” is misleading.
Spoiler that’s not really a spoiler ahead (you know she has autism from the misleading tag line.)
I picked up this book excited to read from the perspective of an adult child of an autistic person. We get an in-depth view of her behavior and its effect on the people around her, namely the narrator - her daughter - and her husband. We find clues that point to lifelong struggles and uncover the masking that kept her functional until her later years. But it’s not til the last handful of pages of the book/the last couple years of her life that she is DIAGNOSED. So we get all this info without the benefit of the narrator being able to tease apart her mom’s behavior through the lens of neurodivergence. And because we, the readers, know from the tagline what’s really wrong, it makes the daughter’s honest reactions and confusion and exasperation harder and harder to sympathize with. Because, again, WE already know what’s going on.
This narrative highlights the legitimate struggles of caring for aging parents and the pitfalls of the British mental health system. It makes me wonder if it would have hit harder for me if they were operating within a system I understood and had to navigate myself. I legitimately think that if the tagline was changed to be (more accurately, IMO) “my mother, UNDIAGNOSED autism, and the failures of the NHS”, I would have a better idea of what to expect from this book and might not have been disappointed by what it ended up being. None of this means it’s a bad book, it was well written and easy to read, I cared, it just wasn’t what I wanted. Two and a half taters 🥔🥔🍠/🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
Spoiler that’s not really a spoiler ahead (you know she has autism from the misleading tag line.)
I picked up this book excited to read from the perspective of an adult child of an autistic person. We get an in-depth view of her behavior and its effect on the people around her, namely the narrator - her daughter - and her husband. We find clues that point to lifelong struggles and uncover the masking that kept her functional until her later years. But it’s not til the last handful of pages of the book/the last couple years of her life that she is DIAGNOSED. So we get all this info without the benefit of the narrator being able to tease apart her mom’s behavior through the lens of neurodivergence. And because we, the readers, know from the tagline what’s really wrong, it makes the daughter’s honest reactions and confusion and exasperation harder and harder to sympathize with. Because, again, WE already know what’s going on.
This narrative highlights the legitimate struggles of caring for aging parents and the pitfalls of the British mental health system. It makes me wonder if it would have hit harder for me if they were operating within a system I understood and had to navigate myself. I legitimately think that if the tagline was changed to be (more accurately, IMO) “my mother, UNDIAGNOSED autism, and the failures of the NHS”, I would have a better idea of what to expect from this book and might not have been disappointed by what it ended up being. None of this means it’s a bad book, it was well written and easy to read, I cared, it just wasn’t what I wanted. Two and a half taters 🥔🥔🍠/🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
jo_the_bookworm's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
aqilahreads's review
3.0
a searing account of a mother's late-diagnosis of autism – and its reaching effects on a whole family; also focusing on what it means to care for our parents in their final years.
i love the way the story was written; really easy to understand & it flows through pretty well. however, there were some parts where i felt a bit agitated because it felt forceful esp when it comes to how the author interprets certain situations that somehow seems exaggerated. perhaps its bc of the intention of wanting to express the raw emotions well esp during the stressful situations but they turned out a bit too much personally for me.
but!! its still a book that i managed to finish reading in a few sittings and thats pretty rare for me when it comes to reading non-fic :")
i love the way the story was written; really easy to understand & it flows through pretty well. however, there were some parts where i felt a bit agitated because it felt forceful esp when it comes to how the author interprets certain situations that somehow seems exaggerated. perhaps its bc of the intention of wanting to express the raw emotions well esp during the stressful situations but they turned out a bit too much personally for me.
but!! its still a book that i managed to finish reading in a few sittings and thats pretty rare for me when it comes to reading non-fic :")