Scottish comedian Fern Brady was told she couldn't be autistic because she'd had loads of boyfriends and is good at eye contact. In this memoir, she delivers a sharp portrait of neurodivergence and living unmasked.
... a testament to Brady’s quality of said character, her tenacity in the face of a world not yet ready to grapple with all she brings to it. Her memoir is not a journey of self-improvement: There is no concrete, happy ending outside of her eventual diagnosis.
Nobody is spared in this brutal, funny and heartbreaking memoir about growing up with undiagnosed autism ... [Brady] deftly weaves facts about autism into her life story, with footnotes from psychological studies. It is testament to her skill as a writer that these passages bolster rather than weigh down her narrative. The pace is brisk and her deadpan humour makes the darkest material hilariously funny.
While detailing a life as a perpetual outsider in an unsympathetic world could have allowed her to wallow in self-pity, Brady manages to plot a course between the drama of repeated brutal encounters and her inner thoughts with a mixture of excruciating honesty and dark humour ... I don’t know if Brady is a great writer in part because she is autistic, but her deeply personal account of bullying, stripping, homelessness and stand-up is shocking and incredibly moving – and it will make you laugh at subjects that you didn’t think possible.
