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Charlotte Moore has three children: the two oldest, George and Sam, are autistic; the youngest Jake is not. In her extraordinary book, which combines personal memoir with the most recent known information on the condition, she describes the circumstances of their birth, behaviour, diagnosis, treatment - and brilliantly conveys what daily life is like for a family with autism. Nick, a great supporter of Charlotte's work, provides the book's introduction. It is reproduced in full below.
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I'm guessing - I can't know for sure, of course, but this seems a reasonable supposition - that you have picked this book up, if not with a heavy heart, then with an oppressive sense of duty. Perhaps you have an autistic grandson, or nephew - most autistic kids are boys - and you feel that the least you can do is to find out more about his condition, especially since you don't know him as well as you'd like to. (How can you, when he won't speak to you, or play with you, or possibly even be in the same room as you?) So maybe reading a book will help, somehow - will show that, even though you feel excluded from his world, you do care.
Or perhaps you are more directly affected; perhaps your own child is autistic, as mine is, in which case your need to read a book on the subject might feel more urgent. If the diagnosis has been recent, then you will almost certainly be desperate to know more. Maybe something in these pages will help to alleviate the panic you feel when you're told that your child has a condition for which there is no cure; indeed, maybe you're hoping that 'George and Sam' will tell you that there is a cure, contrary to all the information you've been given by health professionals. Books tend to need narratives, after all, and the most popular kind of narrative for books about disability is the kind that takes us from the darkness into the light, from despair to hope, from disaster to triumph.
It would be nice to think that there might be a third category of reader, too: some of you might want to read 'George and Sam' in the same way that we all read 'Wild Swans', even though many of us had no burning interest in the history of China, or Claire Tomalin's book about Pepys, despite a long-held suspicion that Pepys' diaries might be on the dull side. Perhaps you read Charlotte Moore's brilliant columns about her autistic sons in the Guardian; if you did, then you'll already know that in the right hands, this subject, like all subjects, can be made to entertain, as well as educate and move. The non-fiction bestseller lists frequently prove that we all want to know more about everything, even if we didn't know that we wanted to know - we're just waiting for the right person to come along and tell us about it.
I have an autistic son, but even so, I would place myself in this last category of readers. Like a lot of people, I sense within me a reluctance to read books about disability. I think I'll end up feeling guilty, or hopeless, or manipulated, or just bad. (And there are so many disabilities - where does one start? Where, more to the point, does one stop?) And I particularly don't want to be made to feel bad precisely because I have an autistic son. As any parent in my situation will tell you, energy and optimism are precious commodities, not to be squandered, and certainly not on a book that describes a condition with which you are wearyingly familiar. So I hope you, and the author, will understand when I say that this is not the sort of book I would normally have chosen to read.
If you belong in the second category, I should tell you right now that Charlotte Moore offers no cure for autism, and nor does she attempt to make you feel better about the huge chunk of bad luck that has fallen from a clear blue sky, like a chunk of frozen 747 urine, and landed right on your head. This is a clear-eyed observation of her sons and their behaviour, and she makes no attempt to sentimentalise them, and she certainly doesn't attempt to tell us that they are now, as she speaks, embarked on a programme or a diet that will eventually take them to Cambridge or RADA or 10 Downing Street. She knows that her sons are autistic, and will stay autistic, for the rest of their lives, unless there is some currently unimaginable scientific breakthrough. And as a consequence, I would say that this might be the only book you need to read about your child's condition. It tells you the things you will need to know - about education, and diet, and behaviour modification, and sleep - but the advice is sensible and practical, rather than evangelical, and in any case it is not the point of the book. The point of 'George and Sam' is to inform, yes, but also to entertain us and engross us and, like all the best books, to resonate.
I'm not sure I would have found it quite so entertaining a few years ago, when my son was first diagnosed. Nowadays, I'm used to glancing out of the kitchen window on a freezing November night and seeing a naked boy bouncing on a trampoline in the dark. It makes me laugh. (I don't just laugh, by the way, before anyone contacts Social Services. I go outside and get him in too. ) Back then, when I didn't understand Danny so well, and didn't really want to think about how his disability might affect me beyond the next few days, the naked trampolining would have alarmed and depressed me; it would have been yet another indication that my life as a parent was not the one I had anticipated.
This process of letting go is long and difficult, and I feel as though I'm right at the beginning of it. Charlotte Moore is, I suspect, right at the end, and there are very, very few parents who ever get there. And this is what makes 'George and Sam' a great book: Moore's willingness (perhaps 'ability' is the more appropriate word, because none of us is willing to give up the life we had planned for ourselves) to see her boys for what they are provides her with a unique perspective. Writing is as much about character as it is about talent, and Moore's character - her wryness and flexibility, her intelligence and her lack of judgmentalism, her lack of both self-pity and of self-aggrandisement - means that she is ideally qualified to tell us this story in a way that hasn't been told before.
She also has the advantage of having two autistic sons, rather than one. The word 'advantage' can only really be applied to this particular project, the one you are holding in your hands; those of us who have one autistic child, and just about manage to keep our heads above the water (and even then not every day of the week), cannot really imagine life with two, even after Charlotte Moore has explained it to us. But what it does mean is that she resists extrapolation, because experience has taught her that you cannot really extrapolate with autistic children. No two autists are alike, and this is as true of their response to therapies and medication as it is of their behaviour and abilities. Moore writes here of the improvement in George's behaviour and language after receiving Auditory Integration Therapy; when Sam was given the same treatment, however, there was no discernible improvement. Lucky for us, in a way. Moore is much too sharp to write a whole book about AIT, but she might have been tempted, with spectacular results in Sam's case. Plenty of other people have written whole books about diets and such like, and though they might help a minority of children, they will not help all, and they will be of absolutely no interest to a general reader. If no two autists are alike, then in George and Sam, Moore has access to a microcosmic world of autism.
'George and Sam' is painfully funny, in a way that is only possible because Moore has learned to appreciate and recognize what she's got in her three boys. (This book is about George and Sam, mostly, but Jake, her youngest, though not autistic, provides her with all sorts of usefully contrasting material.) I once heard her describe George and Sam as "autistic through and through", meaning that, contrary to some fondly-nurtured parental beliefs, there is no normal child trapped inside, waiting for release. That recognition enables her to look at her children with love and joy, rather than love and regret, to observe their behaviour with a winning delight in its eccentricity. Where else will you read about a child so obsessed with white goods that visits to the launderette constitute a treat? Or a child who, for reasons best known to himself, wants everyone to pretend that he doesn't eat, even though he does? The weirdness, the sheer otherworldliness, of autistic thinking is a never-ending source of wonder and fascination - what does it say about them, and what does it say about us? - and Moore's laconic, unshowy narration provides the perfect setting.
I began by saying that the most popular books about disability take us from darkness into the light, and that this book didn't really follow that pattern. On reflection, this isn't strictly true, because 'George and Sam' is luminous. True, it doesn't provide us with the kind of redemption that allows us to weep sentimental tears and then forget all about it (which, after all, is the unwitting function of many against-all-odds books). But it does ask - and, more impressively, answer - important questions, questions that apply to all of us: to what extent are we really prepared to accommodate our children? Are we properly equipped to love them the way they are? If our lives do not turn out the way we had hoped, what is the best way of living them? Do six After Eights constitute a decent breakfast? Charlotte Moore knows, but I'm not telling. You'll have to read this wonderful book to find out. |
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Read an extract
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0141014539,00.html
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