Customer Reviews

Severe Autism, Denied Support: Struggling to Survive in the Mainstream

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Marla was my friend. This book offers valuable insight into the thoughts and feelings of an obviously brilliant, tormented, autistic woman with a difficult personality. Her perceptions, like great modern art, range from highly distorted to remarkably accurate and insightful. The book gives the reader access to the inner workings of one autistic mind; in doing so, it offers a broader understanding of the experience of being autistic and of being human.

Marla's perspective is real, important, not to be discounted or trivialized, but not to be taken as wholly accurate either. Her multiple brain differences made her experience all the people in her life through that distortion. The book helps those of us who love or work with someone who is autistic see that an autistic person's experience of reality may be very different from what we think is real. Marla's reality is distorted by normal standards, but that does not make it less "real."

I encourage you to read this book with patience, an open mind, a forgiving heart, and a grain of salt concerning her depictions of the people and environment around her. Marla's story is an important one and Leonard's effort to tell it is noteworthy.

This book is a welcome change from the books that give an upbeat and rather misleading picture of autistics, easily recovering when they are little kids but never show what they will be like as adults. Leonard Jayson and Marla Comm help us face up to reality that autism is a life-long disability that causes its sufferers all sorts of problems. As a person with an autism spectrum disorder i can truly relate to this book.