Sibling rivalry-and love-of a ravaging kind is the subject of this unsparing memoir of the author's life with his severely autistic brother. Journalist Greenfeld (Standard Deviations) describes his brother, Noah, as a "spitting, jibbering, finger-twiddling, head-bobbing idiot"; unable to speak or clean himself and given to violent tantrums, Noah and his utter indifference to others makes him permanently "alone." But Karl feels almost as alienated; with his parents preoccupied with Noah's needs (and Noah's celebrity after his father, Joshua, wrote a bestselling account of his illness in A Child Called Noah), he turns to drugs and petty crime in the teenage wasteland of suburban Los Angeles. Greenfeld doesn't flinch in his depiction of Noah's raging dysfunctions or his critique of a callous mental health-care system and arrogant autism-research establishment. (He's especially hard on the psychoanalytic theories of the "Viennese charlatan" Bruno Bettelheim.) But the author's self-portrait is equally lacerating; he often wallows in self-pity-"I return home stoned, drunk, puking on myself as I sit defecating into the toilet, crying to my parents... that I am a failure"-and owns up to the coldness that Noah's condition can provoke in him. The result is a bleak but affecting chronicle of a family simultaneously shattered and bound tight by autism. (May)
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A wrenching account of growing up with a profoundly autistic younger brother. Journalist Greenfeld (China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st-Century's First Great Epidemic, 2006, etc.) is the brother of Noah, for a time the best-known autistic child in the country. In a trilogy of books about Noah by their father Josh-beginning in 1972 with A Child Called Noah-the author is "a bit player who provides interesting contrast to his autistic brother but little more than that." Here, Greenfeld begins with his early memories as a toddler in the mid '60s. In 1971 the family moved from New York to California in a desperate search for help for Noah. The author then jumps ahead to his adolescent years in Pacific Palisades, where he, with his Japanese mother, Jewish father and a bizarrely behaving, disabled kid brother, was a social misfit. While the author got involved in petty crime, drugs and imaginary war games, family life revolved around Noah, whom he both resented and loved. Eventually Greenfeld and his parents moved to a new house, leaving Noah in their old one with a caretaker. With the new arrangement, Noah began to recede from his life, and Greenfeld began his own rocky climb to maturity. Memoir turns smoothly to fictional imagining in the later sections as the author thinks about Noah transforming into a brother who can talk to him and share experiences. But in the final pages he abruptly shifts back to harsh reality. Woven into this moving personal story is an account of the changing scientific approaches to autism, from Bruno Bettelheim's claim that cold mothers were the cause and the key to treatment, to the adherents of B.F. Skinner, who saw operant conditioning as the answer. Withinadequate resources and conflicting research, parents of autistic children grasp at misleading claims. As Greenfeld makes clear, while early intervention may help the very young, for autistic adults, like his brother, the situation is exceedingly bleak. Greenfeld spares neither himself nor his brother in this painfully honest, revealing memoir.
“Recent autism memoirs range from accounts of strenuous ‘healing’ to reflection on accepting the condition. Such a reaction isn’t found in Greenfeld’s book. . . . Karl resolves the conflict he sets up . . . with a surprise twist that may remind some readers of ‘The Sixth Sense.’” — Polly Morrice, New York Times Book Review
“Karl Taro Greenfeld grows from child to boy to man, variously resisting and succumbing to the force of his brother’s autism. The reader has no choice but to take the same emotional, heartwarming, tragic, comic, frustrating, loving, painful, uplifting journey.” — Paul A. Offit, author of Autism's False Prophets
“This is a truly beautiful and powerful book. Karl Greenfeld has written his own angle on the story of his autistic brother Noah, made famous in the works of their father Josh Greenfeld. Karl turns his sibling saga into a lyrical exploration of love, mystery, family, and what makes us human. He also dances around hope and reality, fact and fiction, in a way that will startle you. The result is a masterpiece of literature and memory that will leave you breathless.” — Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
“A vivid, compelling, painfully honest sibling story. My heart went out to Karl. I couldn’t put this book down.” — Rachel Simon, author of Riding The Bus With My Sister
“A candid, brave, painful and very well-written memoir about a truly tragic family situation.” — Peter Matthiessen, author of The Shadow Country
“Sibling rivalry—and love—of a ravaging kind is the subject of this unsparing memoir of the author’s life with his severely autistic brother. [An] affecting chronicle of a family simultaneously shattered and bound tight by autism.” — Publishers Weekly
“Gripping.” — Suki Casanave, Washington Post
“Boy Alone unlocks the heart and lets the emotions pour out: grief, despair, anger, love, devotion and wonder. Whether you are a parent or a sibling of someone with autism or just looking in from the outside through this rarely opened window into the complex life of a family coping with autism, you will never forget this book.” — Portia Iversen, Co-Founder of Cure Autism Now and author of Strange Son
“Deep, dark, and devastating, Boy Alone is remarkable in its ruthless honesty, exceptional writing, and eye-opening subject matter. A fascinating and powerful read.” — Janice Erlbaum, author of Have You Found Her
“In his extraordinary memoir, Karl Greenfeld details what it is like to grow up next to a ‘beautiful’ boy with whom he can never play and never connect and who never returns his love, but who, nonetheless, is the most important fact of his life. Greenfeld’s story goes beyond autism, however; it is also a brilliant depiction of male adolescence and a meditation on what family means and what we owe one another in this life.” — Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author of Raising Cain
Deep, dark, and devastating, Boy Alone is remarkable in its ruthless honesty, exceptional writing, and eye-opening subject matter. A fascinating and powerful read.
A candid, brave, painful and very well-written memoir about a truly tragic family situation.
This is a truly beautiful and powerful book. Karl Greenfeld has written his own angle on the story of his autistic brother Noah, made famous in the works of their father Josh Greenfeld. Karl turns his sibling saga into a lyrical exploration of love, mystery, family, and what makes us human. He also dances around hope and reality, fact and fiction, in a way that will startle you. The result is a masterpiece of literature and memory that will leave you breathless.
Recent autism memoirs range from accounts of strenuous ‘healing’ to reflection on accepting the condition. Such a reaction isn’t found in Greenfeld’s book. . . . Karl resolves the conflict he sets up . . . with a surprise twist that may remind some readers of ‘The Sixth Sense.’
A vivid, compelling, painfully honest sibling story. My heart went out to Karl. I couldn’t put this book down.
Boy Alone unlocks the heart and lets the emotions pour out: grief, despair, anger, love, devotion and wonder. Whether you are a parent or a sibling of someone with autism or just looking in from the outside through this rarely opened window into the complex life of a family coping with autism, you will never forget this book.
Karl Taro Greenfeld grows from child to boy to man, variously resisting and succumbing to the force of his brother’s autism. The reader has no choice but to take the same emotional, heartwarming, tragic, comic, frustrating, loving, painful, uplifting journey.
In his extraordinary memoir, Karl Greenfeld details what it is like to grow up next to a ‘beautiful’ boy with whom he can never play and never connect and who never returns his love, but who, nonetheless, is the most important fact of his life. Greenfeld’s story goes beyond autism, however; it is also a brilliant depiction of male adolescence and a meditation on what family means and what we owe one another in this life.
