Susan Green

Neurotribes is a journey through the history of autism, and I’m sorry to say that some of that history is almost incomprehensibly cruel. Like the Nazi policy turning long-care institutions for the care of disabled children into death factories – actually run by the doctors and nurses. And the psychoanalytic theory that blamed ‘refrigerator’ mothers for their child’s condition. And the use of electric shocks to ‘train’ autistic children into neurotypical behaviour…

Asperger’s. Aspies. Hans Asperger was not the only scientist to study of autism, but it was his decade of hands-on research at the Children’s Clinic at the University of Vienna in the 1920s that led to the his name being attached to the syndrome.  Asperger realised that the condition was more like a continuum, and he recognised the special talents and abilities that it conferred on some of his patients; he called them his ‘little professors’. Then came the rise of Hitler, and the wholesale euthanasia – dubbed ‘negative population policies’  – of disabled children. (Killing was called ‘final medical assistance’!)  Asperger’s role seems murky, though he did try to advocate for his ‘little professors’ by stressing the possible uses of their unusual intelligence. After the end of WWII, Asperger’s original concept of autism as ‘a broad and inclusive spectrum…that was “not at all rare” was buried with the ashes of his clinic and the unspeakable memories of that dark time, along with his case records. Much of his writing was never translated from the German, and it was left to another European medico, Baltimore child psychiatrist Leo Kanner, to become the world’s foremost expert. By now, we are so used to thinking of autism as a spectrum that it comes as a bit of a surprise to find out that in the United States the concept was largely lost for decades.

After detailing this early history, Silberman hits his stride with a savage critique of the American medical and psychiatric establishment in the ’50’s and’60’s. Apart from the outright cruelty meted out to autistic children and adults, it’s the sheer wrong-headedness of the ‘experts’ that is so confronting. Kanner’s conception of autism ruled, and it was narrower than Asperger’s. In his opinion, it was was condition of childhood only (thus ignoring autistic teenagers and adults completely) and extremely rare. It became widely accepted that autistic children were not educable and should be institutionalised.
Desperate parents tried medication, behavioural modification, ECT, dietary interventions, psychotherapy and all sorts of expensive quackery. The search for a cause and a cure led to all sorts of theories, from genetic abnormality to toxic chemicals from industry to poor parenting. Imagine routinely telling mothers their child’s autism is their fault for being cold, unresponsive ‘refrigerator mothers’. No wonder autism was a devastating diagnosis.

But there are positive and hopeful stories in here too. One of the real heroes of the book is Dr Lorna Wing, the British psychiatrist who coined the phrase ‘autism spectrum’, and whose mission was to discover what kinds of treatment, assistance and services autistic people and their families needed. Did it help that she was a woman, and that she herself had an autistic child? All sorts of neurodiverse lives are better because of her compassionate, practical approach.

I could go on and on…but it’s a long book! I thoroughly recommend Neurotribes if you are interested in neurodivergence; Silberman has written a deeply human history and made sense of a complex, troubling and epic topic. It made me think about my time working in a ‘sheltered workshop’ with intellectually handicapped adults in the late 1970s.
If they’d been born in Germany in the 1920s and ’30’s, they could have been killed as babies or toddlers. I started to remember their unique personalities; I can still hear Joey imitating car engines, bird calls, radio hosts, pop songs and more with spooky accuracy, and the way Ellen would ‘twinkle’ her fingers when she was thinking (which is a little habit I caught and still, even now, revert to at times).  There were dramas, problems and meltdowns, but also laughter and much affection.

After reading Neurotribes I wonder how many of our clients were autistic. With the right kind of targeted education and therapy, would they have had more fulfilling lives?

The ‘Career Novels for Girls’ were listed on the back cover of this book, Catrin in Wales, which is actually almost an anti-career book. As you will see.

Our young heroine, 18-year-old Catrin, is restless after completing her secretarial studies. Before moving to London to share a flat with her girlfriend Penelope (a high-flying PA), she wants to spread her wings. So she leaves her father, stepmother and step-sister in their suburban home and heads off to Wales. It’s the homeland of her dead mother, and she intends to stay in youth hostels and simply wander. She’s shy and nervous, but determined.

Everything changes when she decides to stay with her aunt Mair, the guardian of a remote historical site, the Priory of Nant Gwyncwfn. When her aunt breaks her leg, a few days visit turns into months as she takes on the running of the Priory, gets to know her neighbours (especially brother and sister Gwenfron and Ifor Williams) and begins to take an interest in Welsh language, culture and history. Though at first she dislikes the isolation and loneliness of the countryside, she overcomes her fears, grows in confidence and competence and comes to love North Wales and the community in the valley. The book ends with Catrin’s engagement to farmer-playwright Ifor and the excitement of the International Eisteddfod.

Though Catrin in Wales was certainly readable (well, I read it, didn’t I?) I kept thinking about what I would do with the material. The story meanders along, with any excitement fairly muted (fears and alarms in the spooky old house, attempts to drive her away by a jealous rival for Ifor’s attention, her rescue of a little boy stuck on a high rock wall, the romance with Ifor). Frustratingly, Allan briefly touches on a lot of themes I think are worth exploring. Welsh nationalism, for one. The flooding of Welsh valleys to provide water for large English cities. Catrin’s cool relationship with her stepmother. Her lack of direction. Careers for girls and women.

Even the romance is a pretty tepid affair – Catrin’s real attraction seems to be to Gwenfon, who is a couple of years older than her. The two girls quickly form a close bond. Unlike Catrin, who did her secretarial training simply because it offered a job and independence, Gwenfon has a real passion. She’s going to train as a nurse.

I gave her a wondering look and went on my way alone, wondering about the difference in people…though I admired nurses with all my heart, I was always glad to get away from the  long wards full of sufferers and bleak, bare corridors. To make it one’s life, willingly and even eagerly, was beyond me. But perhaps I would learn to understand as I got to know Gwenfon better.

Catrin makes a success of managing the Priory, and even finds she has a flair for presenting its history to tourists. Without Ifor on the scene, there could have been a satisfying story in her friendship with Gwenefon and her discovery of a vocation. But she is  happy to become a farmer’s wife in the remote Welsh valley (and a playwright’s wife in London). Nothing wrong with that! I tell myself. But at 18?

Despite the very ‘junior fiction’ cover art, the book was intended for older girls. The YA of the day? I can’t imagine any 13- or 14-year-old persevering with it now, but I could be wrong.
It’s one to file under ‘History of YA – Early Modern Era’.

And a note about the author. Mabel Esther Allan (1915-1998) published an astonishing 107 novels for children and young adults, and over 300 short stories. And if that’s not a career, I don’t know what is. And I had never heard of her.
And actually, I had. Under the pen-name of Jean Estoril, she wrote 11 books about Drina, a young ballet dancer. I think I even read Drina Dances as a girl.

No, I haven’t read any of the (late 1950s) Bodley Head Career Novels for Girls. But if I had, I would have had a rewarding career in physiotherapy!

Begin at the beginning, go to the end, and there stop – that’s what Rickie, our English master, told me when it was settled that I should write the story. It sounds simple enough. But what was the beginning? Haven’t you ever wondered where things start? I mean, take my story. Suppose I say it all began when Nick broke the classroom window with his football. Well, OK, but he couldn’t have kicked the ball through the window if we hadn’t just got super-heated by winning the battle against Toppy’s company. And that wouldn’t have happened if Toppy and Ted hadn’t invented their war game, a month before. And I suppose they’d not have invented their war game, with tanks and tommy guns and ambushes, if there hadn’t been a real war and a stray bomb hadn’t fallen in the middle of Otterbury and made just the right sort of place – a mass of rubble, pipes, rafters, old junk, etc. – for playing this particular game. The place is called ‘The Incident,’ by the way. But then you go back further still and say there wouldn’t have been a real war if Hitler hadn’t come to power. And so on and so on, back into the mists of time. So where does any story begin?

Well, when it comes to children’s fiction from the late 1940s to the 1960s, the boys certainly did get more excitement and action. The Otterbury Incident was a wild ride from page one. The narrator, George – not quite fourteen –  sets the scene (above), and foreshadows some of the characters (Johnny Sharp and the Wart, Inspector Brook) and mentions  a gang of crooks. Then it’s on. The exciting imaginary battles flip into imaginative fund-raising for poor Nick who broke the window. The two companies make peace and combine in Operation Glazier to raise five pounds to repair the window. This is so that Nick, orphaned during the Blitz and living with a violent guardian, doesn’t get beaten (again) and have his puppy sold. The money is too much of a temptation for the obnoxious spiv Johnny Sharp, who with his minion the Wart, steals the funds. How the kids investigate the crime and punish the perpetrators is riveting. I loved the first-person narration; George was a smart, funny, quick-witted boy, not always brave, and on occasion self-doubting. I read the book in one go. A couple of unfortunate racist and anti-Semitic phrases stuck out in a book that would be otherwise a perfectly readable WWII-era children’s adventure in 2024.

And by the way, C Day Lewis is not to be confused with C S Lewis. C Day Lewis (1904-1972) only wrote a couple of children’s books. He was more famous as a poet; in fact, he was Poet Laureate of the UK from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote highly successful detective novels under the name Nicholas Blake. It sounds like he had a busy but disorderly private life – is that typical of poets? – juggling marriages and mistresses with his literary and academic work. The actor Daniel Day-Lewis is one of his children.

And one more thing…
Like a lot of books that I love from this era, it was beautifully illustrated, by a top illustrator. There are 23 small black and white pictures places throughout the text. They match the writing – there’s such an impression of activity and speed. Edward Ardizzone (1900-1979) was, in his day, one of the most famous British illustrators, as well as being a war artist, designer and commercial artist, with an instantly recognisable loose, slightly cartoonish style. As a child, I loved his dreamy, poetic illustrations for a collection by Walter de la Mare called Peacock Pie. Wikipedia tells me that he wrote and illustrated over 20 of his own books, and did the pictures for dozens more.

It’s exciting to discover a new writer. I knew the name  – Penelope Fitzgerald – and I’d seen the film of one of her books, the 2017 The Bookshop starring Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy. It was melancholy and in fact very disheartening, being about a woman who tried and failed to set up a bookshop in a small community. The movie tie-in was on sale in the bookshop where I worked, but I wasn’t tempted.

Why did I chose The Gate of Angels for my book group? Not for very admirable reasons. I’d forgotten about the depressing film, It was short. It sounded light, and possibly funny. I liked the title.

And – what a gorgeous surprise – I loved the book… but it drew very mixed responses from the group. One of the two men, who’d actually worked in Cambridge University, also adored it. It is such fun to share wild enthusiam with another reader! The other man read about 30 pages and gave up. Some of the women took their time to think about it (one even re-read it) and thought it worthwhile and somewhat enjoyable. One woman didn’t like it, and another said that life is too short to read a book like this.

Well, it is an odd little novel. Part love story, part mystery, part ghost story, part historical fiction. It’s set in Cambridge, in 1912. Fred Fairly is a scientist and fellow of the uncomfortable, draughty, all-male (not even any female servants or pets allowed) St Angelicus college in Cambridge. He grew up in an uncomfortable and draughty country rectory (so he’s used to discomfort and cold), the son of a vicar. He’s a scientist, an atheist and a cyclist. The adorable heroine, Daisy Saunders, was born and raised in south London, in extreme poverty. She ‘…grew up with the smells of vinegar, gin, coal smoke, paraffin, sulphur, chloride of lime from backstreet factories, and baking bread every morning‘, doing midnight flits to evade the landlord, with her single mother scrabbling to earn a crust. Daisy has pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She was a student nurse…but no longer. She’s resourceful, practical, kind, generous – to a fault – and also rides a bicycle. The two of them meet via a cycling accident.

The course of love does not run at all smoothly, but – spoiler – though the end is suspenseful, doubtful, thrilling, and nearly doesn’t come off … yes,  it’s happy.
But not quite a rom com, despite the ‘meet cute’. Pervasive sexism – including near-constant sexual harassment –  plus class prejudice, inequality and poverty form hurdle after hurdle after unfair hurdle for Daisy. The cloistered and privileged world of the university forms a barrier for Fred, too. He’s socially, sexually and romantically backward. And I couldn’t help being aware that this whole world is about to be shattered by WWI. All those young men…

There was no melancholy, nothing laboured about the social commentary, always a light touch. And the most luscious, witty, beautiful writing.
This is just the first of the many passages I marked to re-read and enjoy again.

The church and Rectory were once imposingly, now unacceptably, at the top of a steep slope. It took it out of you getting up there, if you wanted the Rector to sign a certificate. Elms sheltered the field, young elders and hazels filled the drainage ditches. All that ought to be cleared before winter, if someone could be found to do it. The Herefords chewed, every jaw moving anti-clockwise, as a tendril grows. Round them the grass stood unmoving, hazed over with a shimmering reddish tinge, ready for hay. The bushes too, were motionless, but from the crowded stalks and the dense hedges there came a perpetual furtive humming, whining and rustling which suggested an alarming amount of activity out of sight. Twigs snapped and dropped from above, sticky threads drifted across from nowhere; there seemed to be something like an assassination, on a small scale, taking place in the tranquil heart of summer.

They don’t make ’em like this any more…

I certainly can’t see Harriet and Cherry Pie being published today. Which doesn’t mean it’s bad, just different. In many ways, Harriet and the Cherry Pie was typical of many of the contemporary English girl’s books (and they were mostly English) I borrowed from the library when I was in primary school.
There’s a kind of formula.  12-year-old Harriet has no mother, and her father is sent to Australia for 6 months for work. That’s (1); absent parents or guardians.  So she and her little sister, Kitten, are bundled off to stay with (2) their great aunt Sophie. A friend or relative the children have never met before always adds a hint of suspense – what will she be like? Harriet assumes that her great aunt will be old and crotchety, but instead she’s young, and owns a tea-shop called The Cherry Pie in London. Which gives us (3): a very different place to home. Often it’s city children going to the country; in this case, Harriet and Kitten go from a suburban life in Bristol to the busyness of a business in central London.
There are nods to Noel Streatfeild – Harriet becomes an actress, more or less by accident and like Streatfeild, Compton takes the reader through the ins and outs of being a child performer. When I was a child, I always liked books that told you how things worked in sufficient detail for me to imagine it was me. So, Harriet has to audition repeatedly, rehearse, study her script, memorise her instructions from the director (including which chalk marks on the floor are hers!), master her nerves, learn to control her voice and so on. It’s not glamorous; it’s work. There’s a lot of waiting around.
And it’s work at the Cherry Pie, too. Again, there are all sorts of details about running a tea shop. And even some recipes!

Harriet is a clever, humble, helpful, good-tempered and generally very nice young heroine. All the adults are kind and helpful, though the thought of 12-year old Harriet being allowed to go off by herself with a variety of male theatre folk gave me a slight frisson. Little Kitten is a cutie. There’s very little suspense, no conflict and in fact, no real drama. Just a sweet, quiet, family-oriented girl’s story that ambles along until it’s finished.

And…something I love about older children’s books; they often had pictures. (I did daydream about dark, intricate, moody illustrations for Verity Sparks…) Harriet and the Cherry Pie was illustrated by Charles Keeping. He’s a very stylish, ‘modern’ (this was the 50’s and 60’s) artist, often quite graphic and – as you can see by the cover – with strong design elements. Not sure about these illustrations, though. Someone a bit more cosy (Shirley Hughes?) might have worked better.

My book club meets in members’ homes from 7.30 in the evening, and to myself I call it the “Wine and Cheese” group. Last night I was the host. There was indeed wine and cheese  – three cheeses, two wines, as per custom – plus a home-made cake to finish off with. Weighing on my mind was the fact that I only have eight random wine glasses, no cheese knives and a shaming lack of cake forks. Oh, and I forgot the cream for the cake. Our living room is perhaps a little too small for nine people, and I had to fetch cane chairs from other parts of the house. My usual FOE (fear of entertaining) surfaced.

It turned out that on a cold night our small living room was warm with all of us bundled in together and divested of overcoats, puffer jackets, hat and scarves. Cheese and biscuits disappeared with no problems about knives, glasses were refilled despite shortcomings. Conversation flowed as well. As host, it was my job to lead the discussion. Often there are lists of questions, but not for this title. I floundered around a bit, trying to keep us on topic, but without notes I was a bit lost and it all got away from me. Which was fun. More fun, probably, than if I’d dutifully followed someone else’s talking points. Discursiveness ruled.  No violent disagreements, because we all, to various degrees, enjoyed the book (I think I could read Helen Garner’s shopping lists with pleasure). Some of us liked the diary entries best, so on we went, to Garner’s dissection of her failing marriage to Murray Bail in her final diary volume, How To End a Story. The piece about Raimond Gaita and his ruined home at Frogmore had us talking about Romulus My Father, both the book and the movie, and the sight of the local reservoir, Cairn Curran, empty and with young trees growing where the water should be.  The unsentimental tribute to her teacher, Mrs Dunkley sparked a discussion about teachers who made a difference in our lives.  I was drawn to her occasional real tenderness –  the piece about her mother nearly made me cry – while others enjoyed that Garnerish wit, sharpness and bite. I read a few excerpts. We laughed a lot.

After everyone bundled up again and went off into the chilly night full of good cheer and perhaps some intellectual stimulation (plus wine and cheese and cake), I cleared away and resolved to banish that foolish FOE. And to scour the Op Shops until I find cheese knives and cake forks.

Stocking up for winter reading. I feel it’s time for a snuggle into children’s literature from the past, and this little selection from the Friends of Castlemaine Library should do the trick, spanning as it does a whole century, from the years 1899 (The Treasure Seekers) to 1969 (Fireweed).

Books, which are usually a multi-purpose cure – solace, distraction or balm, exciting or soothing as required – have not been doing  it for me lately. Perhaps I needed one of those bibliotherapy experts to prescribe exactly the right one. The unexpected death of a very dear friend in the first week of April has had me borrowing piles of books but not finding the right one to transport me.

To be honest, I’ve been struggling with fiction for a while. Finding it hard to actually care enough about the people. Which is awful. I’m a fiction writer, after all! I’d been looking forward to the latest Ann Patchett, but I only made it half way through Tom Lake. The same goes for our book club choice, Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall, but even more so. New York and smart gallery owners and artists seemed so far away and I didn’t like any of them. Lauren Groff’s Matrix was possibly fascinating, but the effort of imagining life in an English nunnery in the middle ages was beyond me. I nearly finished A Vicarage Family by Noel Streatfeild.

Non-fiction, then. A few pages of Stuck Monkey; the Deadly Planetary Cost of the Things We Love by James Hamilton-Patterson, and I shied away from too much reality. Retreating to the past, I tried The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons by Cat Jarman and The Road:A Story of Romans and Ways to the Past by Christopher Hadley but made no headway.

I did actually finish Some Shall Break by Ellie Marney, and Slough House and Bad Actors by Mick Herron, and they certainly passed the time and took me away to somewhere else. To be honest, the fact that the ‘elsewhere’ was somewhere fairly horrid probably didn’t do me all that much good. I started feeling pretty dark. I need a book! I need to read!

Cookbooks to the rescue. Especially Darina Allen’s massive tome The Forgotten Skills of Cooking. Allen is a famous Irish chef, with many honours and prizes and cook books to her name. She runs the Ballymaloe Cookery School at her  family home, Ballymaloe House in Shanagarry, County Cork. I borrowed it for the baking, not the advice on foraging (no Crispy Puffballs for us) or skinning and gutting rabbits. Allen’s Ballymaloe Brown Yeast Bread – made every day at Ballymaloe House for over 60 years –  has been keeping us in toast for weeks. I am looking forward to trying Irish Porter Cake (with Guinness in it!) and Irish Tea Barmbrack (in which the dried fruit is soaked overnight in tea.

When I got the news that my friend had died, I cried for a bit and then went to the kitchen and made a cake.  Making cakes and bread is soothing and positive and life-affirming.

Plus, you get to eat your therapy.

Joe Country by Mick Herron.
The Slough House series are my best thriller discovery of the past year. They’re cynical, twisty, tragic, surprising and very funny. Not so much the subject matter – betrayal and death aren’t exactly a hoot – but the writing.
Here’s the appalling Jackson Lamb, head of Slough House, talking to Catherine, one of the team. They’re at a funeral, and not exactly on the same page in terms of respect. Referring to the grieving grandson of the dead man, Lamb says,
‘Wonder if he’ll jump in the grave.’
‘This isn’t Hamlet.’
‘Does that happen in Hamlet?’ said Lamb. ‘I was thinking of Carry On Screaming.’
I’ve nearly finished the series so far…hurry up with the next one please Mick.

The House That Joy Built by Holly Ringland

Windswept by Anabel Abbs

Why Women Grow by Alice Vincent

Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield

The Storied Life of AK Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
This was a library book group choice.
A top pick from one of our members (the only male); it’s taken us months to get it in, so it must be word-of-mouth demand.
A good book club title. For once, we all loved it. Heartwarming but not icky, funny, surprising, characters you don’t want to let go. About books and publishing and writers. Little rural bookshops. Complicated lives, tragedies, all kinds of love and an adopted baby.
I’m full of admiration when writers can tackle potentially heavy subjects with a light touch that nonetheless doesn’t trivialise. Gorgeous.

Last month I also borrowed big illustrated books on native plants, roses, gardening, travel and bread making. I read bits and pieces of text, but mainly just looked at the pictures. Best of all was this one, The Art of the Tea Towel by Marnie Fogg (great name for a children’s book heroine, a pity it’s taken). Tea towels! Yay! Joyous and bright and cheery. Who would have thought there’d be a whole book on tea towel design? My sister-in-law used to work as a designer for a firm that printed Australiana tea towels. Lots of cute and cuddly animals, pretty fish, shells and coral, and wildflowers.  Occasionally she’d try to sneak something not-so-cute, like a shark or a snake. They always noticed.