Your Voice is All I Hear will familiarize readers with common symptoms, while normalizing schizophrenia as an illness like any other; however, it is obvious that this book’s target audience is not those with schizophrenia themselves.
Although I can’t recommend it wholeheartedly, Louder Than Words features a well researched, realistic portrayal of progressive mutism.
Among Others is a terrific book, even if it isn’t perfect, and I’m so glad Walton represented a disabled teen girl as interesting, strong, and unique.
People like Early do exist, and it’s great to see historical fiction that includes a disabled character, but Early gets a little too close to the trope of the magical or extra-special autistic for my comfort.
Although I sometimes genuinely enjoyed myself while reading this book, those times were unfortunately outweighed by the serious inaccuracies.
The book deals in a thought-provoking way with many issues of human interaction; readers’ enjoyment will depend on their tolerance for abuse themes and for protagonists driven to terrible behavior without fully understanding how terrible it is.
What’s missing here is not any aspect of how the autistic character is depicted, per se—what’s missing is something subtler in the narrator’s depiction, and in her point of view.
I highly recommend Rage for anyone with depression, who wants to learn about depression, or anyone who just enjoys a good story. It’s moving, it’s clever, and despite its fantasy elements it’s incredibly realistic.
For all that there are moments when Rose’s voice is nuanced and shines, those nuances continuously pushed aside for a far more stereotypical narrative. This is not the story of an autistic character written for an inclusive audience; this is a story about an autistic character written for a neurotypical audience.
All the way through the book, I felt that something was slightly off with the portrayal of Tessie’s selective mutism, but in a way that made it hard to pin down.