Searing Memoir, May 14, 2009

Karl Taro Greenfeld's new memoir Boy ALone is a searing account of growing up in a family with an autistic sibling. In a world where autism is rising exponentially, we hear all too rarely from the brothers and sisters of autistic children. Here Greenfeld describes, sometimes in harrowing detail, the strains of living with someone who is severely autistic. The family's attention inevitably centers on Noah, the autistic brother. Greenfeld deals honestly and compassionately with his family's struggle to find an answer to Noah's condition and takes a cold, hard look at what autism means for the three generations of his family who cope with it. This beautifully written book is not just an account of a family dealing with extraordinary circumstances but a reflection on the meaning of family and a powerful portrait of childhood.

"Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping,Into the future.I want to fly like an eagle, till I'm free.Fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me."----Steve Miller Band, 1976At last! For years I have hoped Karl Greenfeld would share his experiences of growing up with his younger brother, Noah, whom Karl describes as "the most famous autistic child in the United States." Karl's father, Josh Greenfeld wrote a trilogy of brutally honest books about life raising his boys. The Noah Trilogy, as "A Child Called Noah," "A Place For Noah" and "A Client Called Noah" have been called have helped unmask the myth of saintly families who cheerfully sacrifice all for a member with multiple challenges. Josh Greenfeld's books are refreshingly brutal in their unabashed honesty....

Greenfeld has written a powerful, maddening book, pitting sentences that are a joy to read against a raw honesty that is almost impossible to accept. It is a work of philosophy as endurance contest. The story of his profoundly autistic younger brother, Noah, is a descent by degrees, the deterioration of a child who begins with all the ordinary promise of his big brother but then slides irrevocably to become a mute and sometimes violent and possibly insane adult.In the burgeoning field of works on autism, this book is like a hatchet thrown at the canon door. The idea that the best parents cannot save a child is rejected with a kind of violence by the prevailing talk-show culture, but that is exactly what happens here. Noah walks into a relentlessly upbeat field of miracle cures and made-for-TV empowerment and overly moralistic breakthroughs with a terrifying defiance. Most of the growing number of new books on this subject are written by celebrated doctors and celebrities...