Keith Stuart writes about the challenges of autism.
A BOY MADE OF BLOCKS
Keith Stuart
Sphere/Hachette
By CUSHLA McKINNEY
Keith Stuart has been writing about technology and digital media for 20 years, latterly for The Guardian, but he has also published several articles about his autistic son, and the two subjects form the basis of his first novel, A Boy Made of Blocks.
The story's narrator, Alex, has spent a lifetime backing away from responsibility, and his response to his son Sam's difficulties is to bury himself in work. Now, exhausted by years of coping alone, his wife has asked him to move out until he is ready to start fulfilling his obligations as both parent and partner. To make matters worse, Alex has lost his job and is now squatting in his best friend's flat, desperately sorry for himself and with no idea of how to rebuild his life.
The most obvious place to start with is his son, and when Sam starts playing Minecraft, Alex joins him online as a way of maintaining contact. Much to his surprise, he discovers that not only can Sam function remarkably well in this safe, orderly space, he can use this shared experience as the basis for a relationship that can eventually be translated from the virtual to the real world.
Of course this is not the end of the story, and Alex has other unresolved issues to deal with before he can return home. But it is the potential for computer games to provide a means through which (some) autistic people can communicate with the neurotypical world that is one of the the most interesting aspects of this story. Not only is it drawn directly from Stuart's own experiences. Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri is said to have created the game for similar reasons.
This is the second novel I have reviewed in as many months about the difficulties of raising autistic children. The first, Shtum, was about a profoundly autistic child, while Sam is at the "easy'' end of the spectrum. Alex's challenge is find a way to speak to rather than for him, but the two books have much in common.
In both cases the authors make the point that Rain Man is not a documentary and that autism does not confer special gifts (although Stuart rather contradicts this later in the story as Sam's creative abilities are revealed). And while they celebrate the way in which their characters' lives are enriched when they move beyond seeing their sons as problems to be solved and start to appreciate the ways in which they think and experience the world, both are also very clear about the fact that the realities of life with a child on the spectrum strains even the strongest of relationships.
It certainly puts my own experiences of raising young children in perspective, and I have immense respect for all those parents who have to cope with the kinds of challenges these books so clearly describe.
Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
