Strange Son (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "It was his mind they came for..." (more)
Key Phrases: stim item, little dust grains, rubber hand experiment, John Houde, Mike Merzenich, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Strange Son is a stunning book - at once passionate, provocative and profound. The power of this unique and compassionate story will restore hope to families and galvanize our scientific quest. -- Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and author of American Mania: When More Is Not Enough

Strange Son tells the story of Portia Iversen's journey through the halls of science, the new frontiers of the brain, and finally to a meeting with an extraordinary woman from India who was equally determined to show the world that her own autistic son was intelligent and so much more than his symptoms. Strange Son challenges many of our beliefs about autism and is lasting proof that there can be so much more on the inside than what is revealed by the outside. -- Bradley Whitford, actor

Faced with the challenging contradiction of great poetic gifts in a severely nonverbal autistic boy, Portia Iversen embarked on a passionate odyssey through science and scientists to unlock this 'Rosetta stone of autism' and to understand her own son, which led her to reframe autism as a profound mistiming of the senses. This is an important, beautifully written book that makes gripping reading. -- Martha Herbert, M.D., Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School

I know one little boy with autism pretty well. He can't tell me what he's thinking, but when I look into his sparkly brown eyes, I know that he is in there and that he's counting on us to help him get out. Portia Iversen's Strange Son is a wake-up call to the world that there are many more of these children than anyone ever knew, and that we must try a lot harder to find a way to connect with them. -- Anthony Edwards, actor

Love introduced two mothers, one who lived in India and the other in the United States. Their passion to seek health for their children, both afflicted by autism, brought the two women across continents and over oceans. Each stimulated the other with her fervor to find medical breakthroughs. Their story is exciting and uplifting. There is within Strange Son a sadness, but this in truth is a hopeful book. The mothers expect that medical research will find a solution for the cruelty of autism, and in Strange Son they show us that the lushness of family love continues to be the greatest therapy. -- Maya Angelou

Portia Iversen has used her eyes and ears to pierce the seemingly impenetrable armor of the autism puzzle, and Strange Son reflects the genius of her ability to observe and to listen, filing away in remarkable detail the life experiences of two boys who carry with them the essential clues for understanding the underlying disturbances in brain architecture and function that result in autism. -- Pat Levitt, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center For Research on Human Development

Portia Iversen's personal experience led her from life as the parent of an autistic son to a leader in changing our outlook on this disorder and exploring its underlying cause. This is the story of her journey. -- John Mazziotta, M.D., Ph.D., chair, department of neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA

Product Description

Part memoir, part detective story, this is the powerful story of how two mothers from opposite sides of the world united in an effort to communicate with their severely autistic sons, discovering breakthroughs that challenged prevailing theories about autism. Tito Mukhopadhyay, an autistic boy from India who spends most of his time flapping his fingers in front of his eyes, has an IQ of 185. He favors the writings of Wordsworth and Ibsen. He loves philosophy, reads People, and worries about conflict in the Middle East. He also writes beautiful poetry.

That Tito can communicate at all is due to his mother, Soma, who single-handedly developed a revolutionary method of teaching him in their one-room apartment in Bangalore, a "classroom" that lacked even running water.

Portia Iversen, an Emmy-winning art director whose life was turned upside down when her own son Dov was diagnosed with autism, heard of Soma's miraculous story in the course of her own desperate search for a cure. Under the auspices of Cure Autism Now, the foundation she started with her husband that is now one of the largest funds for autism research in the world, Portia brought Soma and Tito to America to help researchers understand how Soma accomplished this amazing feat and to determine what can be learned from their success.

Together, Soma and Portia have made remarkable progress in teaching their sons how to break through the walls of autism. And, in the process, they have assisted scientists in making astonishing discoveries about the nature of autism itself.

Strange Son is the extraordinary account of two families who redefined how autism-and autistic people-should be treated, all the while helping to answer some of autism's most baffling questions and prompting new research. Iversen weaves the twin stories of Soma and Tito (and how Soma's methods mystified experts) together with her own story of how she and her family came to understand Dov. The result is a book suffused with uplifting human drama.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1 edition (December 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573223115
• ISBN-13: 978-1573223119
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #586,228 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The book was a SLAP on my face, March 3, 2007

By	Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay "Tito Rajarshi Muk... (USA) - See all my reviews

The book `Strange Son' felt like a `slap' on my face from someone who mother and I trusted the most.

Overstimulation and puberty stage can be difficult for many like me. But getting recorded in a way like that, `hurts more than my Autism'.

`May the writer find whatever she seeks'.

My actions have been mentioned as 'beastly', 'alien being', 'possessed by a demon...'

On page 129: 'When I left the apartment, When I left their apartment that day I felt as if I'd glimpsed into the mind of an alien being'.

On page 116: "'Tired' was hardly an apt explanation for the extraordinary scene we had been witnessing ... where food was flying in every direction, accompanied by his odd grimacing sounds...";

Page 117, "I emailed Tito that same night and asked him why he behaved like that at the table, grabbing food and acting like a wild beast ...";

Page 126, "He dashed through the house and raced toward the fridge, the first stop on the terrible circuit he could not break free of. He flung open the refrigerator door and wildly rifled through its contents... `You'll never get a publisher with this kind of behavior!' I commented in a low voice";

Page 127, "Now it seemed as if Tito were possessed by a demon.";

I have nothing against the author. I have spent many happy moments with the author and really considered her to be a friend, trusting my actions would stay private with her. The graphic description is what hurts.

By the way, I `hand-write' and communicate/write my books (the Mind Tree, Gold of the Sunbeams, Beyond the Silence). Next year my new book (untitled) will be out, which will describe my sensory conditions in detail, so that other authors may be more equipped before writing about them as `observers' if they watch the `show'.

Regards to one and all.

Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay

(my message got deleted again.....Strange Deletion! So I put my original message back) If anyone deletes this message again, I'll put it back.

31 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly an amazing book, December 30, 2006

By	Lisa Ackerman (Newport Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a parent of a child with autism I have read well over 200 books on the topic. I learn something from just about every book I pick up. And as you would expect some books are bombs where I feel they were a waste of time providing no information and perpetuating the myth of no hope. Other books are tremendous providers of needed information and take great efforts to open your eyes to a new concept or paradigm. This is one of those books.

The book by Portia Iverson featuring the amazing Soma, Tito and her son Dov was one of those books that not only opened my eyes but taught me a few things that are extremely important.

1) There is always a soul waiting to be untapped in the body of a person with autism. It is up to us to figure how to connect with them and more importantly get them to communicate with us.

2) Some words to all parents with a child affected by autism: Never give up. You have not done "everything" because there is more out there to do in every situation for every child or adult affected.

3) Autism is not autism - it is autismS. Each person is unique and how they are affected and what unlocks their abilities.


This book is a tremendous story of accomplishments that needed to be shared. I highly recommend it for any parent, researcher or someone who wants to get a glimpse of autism and its mysterious way it can affect a person. It provided great insight and information that will remain with me forever.

This book is not about recovery but a major breakthrough that could greatly change the lives of families with a non verbal and severly autistic child. It could also provide light to someone that has a high functioning child. It is that profound.

Thank you for writing it Portia and sharing this important story.

20 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Tito's Reply to Mr. M. L Lamendola's Review, March 15, 2007

By	Cams TT - See all my reviews

Strange things can happen in life.
The involvement with the CAN foundation felt 'strange' to us when we lived in the US for the first year, after coming from India, with 'what on earth are we doing in this new country?' as we saw the fast life in LA.
But we got `used' to it.

Today when we are settled with friends (real friends) around, we know why we are here. We feel that we have a 'duty' to give back what we got in this wonderful country. Only the mission of HALO could give us that opportunity.

Mother and my mission is not 'future', but `present'.
`Prepare the present to face future', so that Autism becomes just an incidental `happening' like an accident of birth, and the `individual' person lives a life to the best potential, raising the head, saying to the world...'Autism? Perhaps I have it,.....so what?'
A new life with a goal.
And we look `forward to' it.
It needed a different view, which no other organization CAN provide.

Regards to one and all,
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay

Does this add to the discussion? No.
I am 'using' someone else's platform to talk. (Just as someone else used my name to write StrangeSon!')