Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst

Harmony

Carolyn Parkhurst

This book paints a vivid picture of life with an autistic teenager. Tilly's family find it increasingly hard to cope with her & desperation leads them to leave their city life to join 'Camp Harmony' a sort of commune for families with problem children. I loved the joint narrative by Tilly's mother and her younger sister Iris, & the gripping way the story unfolds. Humour and sadness intermingle, compulsive reading as the inevitable tragedy occurs.

Extract
Today you may be the mom whose child seems too old to be having a tantrum in the post office (or the one whose child is touching her head to the floor of a Chinese restaurant - right there, she's doing it again), but tomorrow you may be the mom whose child holds forth on the difference between 'time' and 'thyme' in the produce isle of the grocery store. When she's having trouble with something - like now, as she begins to lose patience with how long it's taking for the food to arrive - try to look at things from her point of view. (Isn't that what we keep saying she lacks?)
Parallels
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding
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Violence
Explicit sexual content