doonay

Jodi Picoult is far from my favorite author, so all you Picoultites out there, you might as well skip this review. I am interested in stories about people on the autistic spectrum with Asperger behaviors, so I thought I would give this one a try. Sigh. I should have known better. In Ms. Picoult's heavy-handed hands, the behavior of the protagonist with Aspergers is exaggerated and twisted simply for the benefit of the plot. Eating only foods of a certain color, but on different days, is not traditionally Aspergerian - maybe eating foods of the same color - but not blue food on Tuesday, yellow on Saturday, etc. etc. At one point, the protagonist re-orders some CDs that have fallen in alphabetical order, but children with Aspergers do not usually have a need to order everything they come across - if they have never seen it before and it is not within their area of fixation, they are more likely not to notice the disorder, or if they notice it, to ignore it. But because this is a plot point, suddenly it becomes a symptom of Aspergers. Further I have never read anywhere that Aspergers is a genetic disorder - but in this novel there is a clear implication that this is the case. And then we have the usual stuff that drives me absolutely CRAZY which is having the characters behave in ways that no one else in the world would do. For example, imagine yourself a mother with a son who has Aspergers and is on trial for murder, and that child has meltdowns whenever things go out of his routine so he is now regularly having meltdowns due to the pressure of the trial. Now imagine it is three a.m. on a February night in Vermont. Would you leave your son, run (yes, you heard me - run) across town to the office of your son's lawyer who has never shown an overt sexual interest in you, and have sex with him? Somehow I think most of us would be trying to get a good night's sleep, not catch pneumonia, and maintain a professional relationship with this man. That is why we will never be Picoult characters. Now, imagine yourself the defense attorney,and you have just heard at least three witnesses explain how Asperger children answer questions extremely literally (such as tossing a tent at you if you asked them to 'pitch a tent'). Do you think that you would ask your client a question like "Were you sorry you killed the girl?" No, because if the Aspergerian witness did not kill the girl, he would simply answer "No" since he hadn't killed her and therefore could not be sorry that he had done so. Sigh. Remind me not to try Picoult again.

2022-12-07 07:01