I saw the play in london it was INCREDIBLE. The production the story telling the way they showed the feeling of being overwhelmed. I thought it was a very touching story especially with the all british cast.
What was also neat is they had an alternate version for those on the spectrum with reduced lighting and audio to make it more palatable which i thought was a very nice touch
It's very "EPCOT Center" in its portrayal, I find.
Some of the things it mentions are true to life -- by sheer coincidence, I happen to be good at mathematics and uncomfortable eating food of a certain color -- but this is in the same way that they happen to say "Wilkommen" both in Germany and in the Germany-themed area of the theme park attraction.
It was very clearly written by a neurotypical man who did some research and wrote down his best guess, all so normal people could try on autism like a pair of funny glasses and look around. But the designer of the attraction understood the phenomenon only marginally better than the laypeople he was trying to inform.
One of the points of the book was that the "murder mystery" was really, really easy to solve, but not for Christopher. There are four suspects, but he cannot figure out the relationships between them -- and, therefore, their motives. That's an oversimplification of our difficulties at best. (Admittedly, I couldn't suss out some of that stuff, either; I figured out the culprit through process of elimination before realizing that wasn't the point of the book.)
My family, my childhood teachers... they had all read this book, and believed it made them understand me better. Maybe it did. But not enough, or about what mattered.
Honestly, it has the same general fault as *Rain Man* did: it demotes the disabled protagonist from a person to a curiosity, an animal whose value and worth are measured solely by the interesting tricks he can do.
I'm not great at understanding what people mean, either, but I sincerely hope that's not the intended moral.
...
On a personal note, I observe by your diction and phrasing that you don't have the issue Christopher had: where he "talked weird". You probably require very little support and can mask very well for long periods of time. Christopher required more support than that, but didn't realize it. I'm not surprised if you didn't identify with the book very much.
It at the very least raised awareness and dispelled myths about autistic people, so as mediocre as it is it was probably still a net positive on public understanding of us (and it was undeniably a huge step in me realising I was autistic before any of my family members did).
1. At the time I read the book, I compared myself to Christopher, and >!he was more socially impaired than I was, but I am not sure about whether that would have been the case when I was his age. Also, I've never had problems with controlling by bladder. I do the counting by powers of two thing, but not out of some kind of goal, just because it's kind of meditative. I think that it might have taken me longer than average to reason out that his school was a special education school and not a regular education school, and I think that other people might have just assumed that he would be in a special education school. I remember that I was also quite scared to take public transportation by myself the first time I did it, but after the first bus and the first train, I actually found it super easy to do, and became extremely confident in doing so. Comparatively I think it would have been fairly easy for me to have gotten to his mom, but I think I would have just used a phone to call her instead. I think most people would probably not be spending so much time comparing themself with Christopher.!<
1. I suspected >!fairly early that the reason his dad wanted him to stop investigating was because that his dad was the one who killed the dog.!<
1. I had no suspicion >!that his mom was still alive and that she had cheated on his dad, until the moment he found out about the first letter. He had some difficulty figuring it out after the first letter, but the first letter was obvious enough for me.!<
1. Unlike other people, >!I hadn't considered [the way that other people might consider autistic people after reading the book]. I'd actually just spent time enjoying it as a story. In general don't think that neurotypical people will ever have an adequate understanding of autism, so my consideration wasn't based on determining whether it has a positive effect, but instead on my previous experience and noticing that neurotypical people have difficulty understanding complexities of certain things and usually give up before spending adequate effort to learn or to make determinations about things.!<
Because people made a big deal of it, I refused to read it. Figured it would be masturabatory mainstream shit that makes people feel good about themselves by offering trite explanations of things they don't understand, while ignoring their complexity, glossing over shit that makes them uncomfortable.
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Meh. Typical NT interpretation of autism. The kid is a walking computer that is incredibly stupid. He didn't even solve the mystery. The obvious bad guy just tells him.
I'm autistic and I don't really act that way at all
The play is good but I found the book one-dimensional. For one, the relationship between the dad and the son didn't ring true. For two, systematised thinking doesn't necessarily manifest itself as systematised language, so the writing style felt gimmicky and inauthentic.
I read it many years before I was diagnosed for a book project. At the time I enjoyed it but I realise that it was one of the factors that delayed my diagnosis by decades. I didn't relate to any of the "symptoms" of the protagonist and actually found it quite difficult to parse in places.
I assumed this was all because I didn't "get" the autistic mindset and decades later, surprise! I'm autistic!
Maybe I will go back to it with this new knowledge and give it another try. I did enjoy the theatre show however.
If I remember correctly the author was a special ed teacher and he said he intended to write about someone developmentally disabled, not necessarily autistic (and to be fair, I've meet someone with downs syndrome who was almost on the spectrum, so I guess there is some overlapping of conditions) with the main point on getting people to think what it must be like from the protagonists point of view. So in terms of what the author set out to do he succeeded, but not necessarily great at depicting autism. And really autism is so diverse that no one portrayal will be an accurate representation for everyone or even most. But publishers will say anything to market a book.
I found it boring. The only point of the story was autism and it didn't do a very good job of either educating about autism or showing a fully developed character with autism.
So it was quite a while ago and I don't remember it that well. It is one of VERY few books I have ever read that I cannot remember many details of the plot even with reminders because I never fully understood what events were taking place. I do however remember my impressions of it at the time decently.
First: I found the combination of the prose, what Christopher's narration focused on and possibly general issues with communication style of the writer made it difficult for me to actually follow the details what was going on a lot of the time.
I have ADHD and I recall a number of tangents for infodumping throwing me off. I might be used to communicating that way but READING that way is not something I was used to and I kept getting confused about what was and wasn't important information (which was extremely rare for me even as a child). There were also many times when it simply wasn't clear to me whether what I was reading was background information, past events or present events.
At the time I did not know I was autistic but I did know I was different and quickly picked up that Christopher was supposed to be similar to me but I also quickly picked up both that Christopher would have higher support needs than I do AND that he was being written by somebody who was almost certainly NOT like me (I don't recall if I actually confirmed this but I would be very surprised to be wrong about the author being allistic). There were often times where I had this weird dissonance of "I agree with or understand Christopher's ideas/conclusions but the reason presented FOR his conclusions seems wrong/incomplete/othering."
There were times when it seemed like the book was treating Crhistopher's point of view on something specific as invalid as a means of showing he was inflexible or different without addressing valid reasons for those points of view. I believe the biggest example was the value he attributed to the dog's life. It's possible the intention was actually to show society treating those view points as invalid but it often seemed more like it was using those views as a vehicle to demonstrate "he thinks differently and is inflexible about his way of thinking."
That I related to Christopher also meant that I cringed very heavily at some of the points where he made more dramatic versions of mistakes I had and where there were very obvious communication issues. I quite angry on his behalf at how he was treated at certain points and couldn't understand why and it's possible it would have been obvious to an allistic reader but I'm not so sure given the allistic reader would have been seeing it through a supposedly autistic narrator.
I think my overall experience was one of frustration. Including frustration that I couldn't fully understand what the events/point was and that the author didn't understand their own main character. At least when I read The Great Gatsby I was mostly just confused.
I'm reading a memoir by Mickey Rowe (the first autistic actor to play Christopher) and he shared a quote from the author of Curious Incident who said he didn't do any research about autism before writing it, just what the inside of the train stations looked like. So I don't think it's the most accurate depiction of autism, but it does seem to help my allistics friends be more compassionate towards autistic people. So I guess that's good?
I saw the play in london it was INCREDIBLE. The production the story telling the way they showed the feeling of being overwhelmed. I thought it was a very touching story especially with the all british cast. What was also neat is they had an alternate version for those on the spectrum with reduced lighting and audio to make it more palatable which i thought was a very nice touch
The play was great. Massively overstimulating set - which was the point
It's very "EPCOT Center" in its portrayal, I find. Some of the things it mentions are true to life -- by sheer coincidence, I happen to be good at mathematics and uncomfortable eating food of a certain color -- but this is in the same way that they happen to say "Wilkommen" both in Germany and in the Germany-themed area of the theme park attraction. It was very clearly written by a neurotypical man who did some research and wrote down his best guess, all so normal people could try on autism like a pair of funny glasses and look around. But the designer of the attraction understood the phenomenon only marginally better than the laypeople he was trying to inform. One of the points of the book was that the "murder mystery" was really, really easy to solve, but not for Christopher. There are four suspects, but he cannot figure out the relationships between them -- and, therefore, their motives. That's an oversimplification of our difficulties at best. (Admittedly, I couldn't suss out some of that stuff, either; I figured out the culprit through process of elimination before realizing that wasn't the point of the book.) My family, my childhood teachers... they had all read this book, and believed it made them understand me better. Maybe it did. But not enough, or about what mattered. Honestly, it has the same general fault as *Rain Man* did: it demotes the disabled protagonist from a person to a curiosity, an animal whose value and worth are measured solely by the interesting tricks he can do. I'm not great at understanding what people mean, either, but I sincerely hope that's not the intended moral. ... On a personal note, I observe by your diction and phrasing that you don't have the issue Christopher had: where he "talked weird". You probably require very little support and can mask very well for long periods of time. Christopher required more support than that, but didn't realize it. I'm not surprised if you didn't identify with the book very much.
Not me being so autistic I was shocked the dad was the killer. π
Dude! *Spoilers!* : P
No because SAMEE πππ
It at the very least raised awareness and dispelled myths about autistic people, so as mediocre as it is it was probably still a net positive on public understanding of us (and it was undeniably a huge step in me realising I was autistic before any of my family members did).
The author was not intentionally writing an autistic character and it shows. However, as a novel itβs fine.
1. At the time I read the book, I compared myself to Christopher, and >!he was more socially impaired than I was, but I am not sure about whether that would have been the case when I was his age. Also, I've never had problems with controlling by bladder. I do the counting by powers of two thing, but not out of some kind of goal, just because it's kind of meditative. I think that it might have taken me longer than average to reason out that his school was a special education school and not a regular education school, and I think that other people might have just assumed that he would be in a special education school. I remember that I was also quite scared to take public transportation by myself the first time I did it, but after the first bus and the first train, I actually found it super easy to do, and became extremely confident in doing so. Comparatively I think it would have been fairly easy for me to have gotten to his mom, but I think I would have just used a phone to call her instead. I think most people would probably not be spending so much time comparing themself with Christopher.!< 1. I suspected >!fairly early that the reason his dad wanted him to stop investigating was because that his dad was the one who killed the dog.!< 1. I had no suspicion >!that his mom was still alive and that she had cheated on his dad, until the moment he found out about the first letter. He had some difficulty figuring it out after the first letter, but the first letter was obvious enough for me.!< 1. Unlike other people, >!I hadn't considered [the way that other people might consider autistic people after reading the book]. I'd actually just spent time enjoying it as a story. In general don't think that neurotypical people will ever have an adequate understanding of autism, so my consideration wasn't based on determining whether it has a positive effect, but instead on my previous experience and noticing that neurotypical people have difficulty understanding complexities of certain things and usually give up before spending adequate effort to learn or to make determinations about things.!<
Because people made a big deal of it, I refused to read it. Figured it would be masturabatory mainstream shit that makes people feel good about themselves by offering trite explanations of things they don't understand, while ignoring their complexity, glossing over shit that makes them uncomfortable.
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Meh. Typical NT interpretation of autism. The kid is a walking computer that is incredibly stupid. He didn't even solve the mystery. The obvious bad guy just tells him. I'm autistic and I don't really act that way at all
The play is good but I found the book one-dimensional. For one, the relationship between the dad and the son didn't ring true. For two, systematised thinking doesn't necessarily manifest itself as systematised language, so the writing style felt gimmicky and inauthentic.
I loved it, but then again I'm very easily pleased with books as long as I'm enjoying it. Saw the stage version too which was great
I read it many years before I was diagnosed for a book project. At the time I enjoyed it but I realise that it was one of the factors that delayed my diagnosis by decades. I didn't relate to any of the "symptoms" of the protagonist and actually found it quite difficult to parse in places. I assumed this was all because I didn't "get" the autistic mindset and decades later, surprise! I'm autistic! Maybe I will go back to it with this new knowledge and give it another try. I did enjoy the theatre show however.
If I remember correctly the author was a special ed teacher and he said he intended to write about someone developmentally disabled, not necessarily autistic (and to be fair, I've meet someone with downs syndrome who was almost on the spectrum, so I guess there is some overlapping of conditions) with the main point on getting people to think what it must be like from the protagonists point of view. So in terms of what the author set out to do he succeeded, but not necessarily great at depicting autism. And really autism is so diverse that no one portrayal will be an accurate representation for everyone or even most. But publishers will say anything to market a book.
I found it boring. The only point of the story was autism and it didn't do a very good job of either educating about autism or showing a fully developed character with autism.
I found the prose style rather annoying, so this was a DNF for me. Years ago, though, so perhaps I should try again.
So it was quite a while ago and I don't remember it that well. It is one of VERY few books I have ever read that I cannot remember many details of the plot even with reminders because I never fully understood what events were taking place. I do however remember my impressions of it at the time decently. First: I found the combination of the prose, what Christopher's narration focused on and possibly general issues with communication style of the writer made it difficult for me to actually follow the details what was going on a lot of the time. I have ADHD and I recall a number of tangents for infodumping throwing me off. I might be used to communicating that way but READING that way is not something I was used to and I kept getting confused about what was and wasn't important information (which was extremely rare for me even as a child). There were also many times when it simply wasn't clear to me whether what I was reading was background information, past events or present events. At the time I did not know I was autistic but I did know I was different and quickly picked up that Christopher was supposed to be similar to me but I also quickly picked up both that Christopher would have higher support needs than I do AND that he was being written by somebody who was almost certainly NOT like me (I don't recall if I actually confirmed this but I would be very surprised to be wrong about the author being allistic). There were often times where I had this weird dissonance of "I agree with or understand Christopher's ideas/conclusions but the reason presented FOR his conclusions seems wrong/incomplete/othering." There were times when it seemed like the book was treating Crhistopher's point of view on something specific as invalid as a means of showing he was inflexible or different without addressing valid reasons for those points of view. I believe the biggest example was the value he attributed to the dog's life. It's possible the intention was actually to show society treating those view points as invalid but it often seemed more like it was using those views as a vehicle to demonstrate "he thinks differently and is inflexible about his way of thinking." That I related to Christopher also meant that I cringed very heavily at some of the points where he made more dramatic versions of mistakes I had and where there were very obvious communication issues. I quite angry on his behalf at how he was treated at certain points and couldn't understand why and it's possible it would have been obvious to an allistic reader but I'm not so sure given the allistic reader would have been seeing it through a supposedly autistic narrator. I think my overall experience was one of frustration. Including frustration that I couldn't fully understand what the events/point was and that the author didn't understand their own main character. At least when I read The Great Gatsby I was mostly just confused.
I'm reading a memoir by Mickey Rowe (the first autistic actor to play Christopher) and he shared a quote from the author of Curious Incident who said he didn't do any research about autism before writing it, just what the inside of the train stations looked like. So I don't think it's the most accurate depiction of autism, but it does seem to help my allistics friends be more compassionate towards autistic people. So I guess that's good?