Patronising, ableist, self-indulgent nonsense

I had such high hopes for this book, but I had to literally force myself to listen to the whole thing to give it a fair go, and I found myself feeling angrier and more insulted with each chapter. It's hard to tell if the author genuinely wants to understand and help autistics or if she simply wants to plug her own company (which she insists on several occasions that she is not doing... perhaps the lady doth protest too much?!) and bask in the glow of self-satisfaction at how much she 'knows' about the autistic experience and how 'successful' she is - the latter seems most likely to me. Either way, the fact that she herself is not autistic is blatantly apparent.

There were a couple of interesting points from the perspective of the autistic reader - the mechanics of small talk and the concept of a 'friendship pyramid' being examples - but on the whole this book was a weird mish-mash of overly detailed descriptions of certain life events eg. literally every single step of the process of going abroad or talking to another person at a shop/bus-stop etc., gross-oversimplification of certain autistic difficulties eg. eye-contact: 'remember to look at people so you can tell what they're feeling!' (implying that autistics simply 'forget' to look at people, and if we remember to do it we'll magically be able to decipher all the hidden meanings and feelings of the other person, and not have any issues with the actual sensory sensations that make it so uncomfortable and overwhelming in the first place!), and a load of ableist nonsense designed to encourage the neurotypicals in the autist's life to essentially step back and let the professionals 'fix' the autistic person. Who is this book even for? It's as if she's trying to explain things to an autistic person in one moment, but then suddenly addressing the neurotypicals as if the autistic people were no longer there and are too 'slow' to realise what's being said about them.

The final straw for me was during the conclusion at the end where the author rather confidently and self-assuredly announced, with no hint of awareness of how insulting it was, that 'autism is a mental health disorder that needs therapeutic and drug treatments to 'fix' it, so that neurotypicals can benefit from all the wonderful things autistic people have to offer'.

(Please note I've paraphrased any quotes I've put, but the basic gist of the words are the same)

In terms of the audio side of things, the narrator spoke with an patronising, smug, overly optimistic tone throughout, akin to someone cheerfully saying 'You have depression? Just pop outside for a nice little stroll around the neighbourhood in the sun. Don't forget to smile at all the people you see! Congratulations, you're no longer depressed!!!' There was also a dog yapping in the background for several minutes of part of the audio (during the section about airports, if my memory serves me well). This is not acceptable in ANY circumstance with an audiobook recording, let alone one apparently aimed at autistic people to show how well the author 'understands' such people!

There are so many other things that irritated and offended me throughout this book but they've all blended into one giant clump of irritation for me now, and I can't bear to trawl back through any more of the specifics.

As I said at the start, I had such high hopes for this book as the title suggested it might be the answer to a life's worth of questions... but all it did was prove just how far society still has to go in order to truly understand and accept each other's differences. Other people may hold a different view (mainly neurotypicals who don't know any different, I'd assume!) but I personally wish I'd never read it.

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