Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism Book

Soma and Tito were endlessly fascinating and the only reason(s) I read this book cover to cover (Once he joked about Portia's name and her being a "lady lawyer" not unlike her namesake!). In fact I had to fight against how much I was growing to dislike Portia and her narrative voice to finish the book. Some of the reasons why I found the author nearly intolerable:

1) there is always a point when an activist or advocate becomes really ridiculously demanding, and Portia was at this point often.

2) she seems to write off mentioning as understanding (comprehension, or worse, compassion) - by this I mean she spent quite some time dwelling on how she and those around her/close to her felt about 9/11, and then after noting Soma's indifference to the tragedy, Portia just added simply that Soma had been exposed to many more traumatic religious, political, social upheavals and natural disasters than that she (Portia) could even imagine... and then she moved onto something else entirely.

3) i can't help but feel like she characterized Soma unfairly. she fit in really weird episodes of Soma's lack of understanding of how westerners tend to socialize. she didn't go so far as to demonize or mock Soma's differences, but I think more in order to show that she was gregarious and open-minded than a genuine attempt to accept and know Soma. She seems more concerned about her portrayal of herself in dealing with Soma than her portrayal of Soma

4) regarding sexism - she remarked that it was surprising to see Dov (her own son) learning that dolls are toys for girls (a social rule) as quickly as he had learn things like facts, but when Tito (Soma's son) wrote to her something sexist, she was bothered enough to complain to her husband. Her husband subsequently lectured and 'converted' Tito to the cause of equality, and Portia FELT SMUG. I can't imagine taking issue on something like that with someone from a different culture just because I did not share his point of view, much less if that person was severely autistic, and even less if I also had a beloved son who was severely autistic. I mean, that's fucking petty.

5) speaking of petty: a little girl, in fact, a friend of her daughter's, innocently expressed incredulity when she learned that Dov also attended school. In an effort to restore what she imagined must be Dov's hurt feelings, she had Dov demonstrate the ability to do long division in front of the girls, something she knew full well they had not mastered. In fact, she Asked them about it Knowing they weren't any good at it. And then she proceeded to record their sounds of confusion and lack of understanding as Dov completed a problem. What a petty thing to do with 4th graders, one of whom is also her flesh and blood as much as Dov.

And finally, I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't help but compared this book to a few nonfiction titles I had enjoyed most recently. As far as a heartfelt memoir goes, it pales in comparison with My Brother's Madness. The only time I came close to tears was when Soma and Tito were doubted by the scientists Portia had led them to. It read as though Portia was more driven by her cause than her admiration for Soma or the scientists or even her love for Dov. As far as an informative, easy to read, science "popularizer" so to speak goes, this book is about as bad as The Emperor of All Maladies was good. Mukherjee (author of The Emperor) was able to use foreign scientific terms and complex scientific concepts, but in a manner so well ordered by logic that he was easy to understand. In contrast, Ms. Iversen, in an effort to be more easily understood, would use phrases or terms that could almost hold meaning in the most ordinary way, never explain them, and go on to use them to illustrate or support other units of knowledge that similarly remain elusive to her reader. Also, she seems to wonder a lot about what the scientific reality of any given phenomenon is without ever following up with anything in the way of experiments that could confirm or deny her speculations and suspicions. To put it accusingly, it would almost seem as if she's putting a lot of scientifically baseless ideas out there just for the hell of it.

To sum it up, as a biography of the journey undertaken by her and Soma and Tito and Dov, it is abundantly clear that she painted herself in the best light, and was likely unfair to Soma and Tito. As a layman's guide meant to acquaint the average person with scientific strides made in the search for the cure of autism (much in the same vein Mukherjee had documented cancer research), it offered nearly no usable information. The only thing interesting in this regard were the results of some tests that had been done with Dov, Tito, other "low-functioning"/nonverbal autistic children, and Temple Grandin (a high-functioning autistic professional and author of multiple books on her unique experience), but Iversen was unable to guide her readers to the significance of these fascinating results. Lastly, as a piece of propaganda for CAN (now Autism Speaks) in longform, it probably worked a lot better with people more like Iversen than people more like me, in other words, it ought to be wildly successful in this function as people more like her are also more likely to have the material means to help her cause.