Feeling more like interlinked short stories than a cohesive novel, this easy to read, thought-provoking book looks at different presentations of neurodiversity and disability through a series of vignettes of staff and clients in an adult day care centre. Giving a voice to the voiceless and overlooked, it is both funny and poignant, highlighting inner worlds, human connections, as well as the stresses, and joys, of those who care for them.
Since the day that he was three, when she realized that he was not mentally retarded, as she had been told by doctors, she has kept up a one-sided conversation with him. She talks to him as if he could answer back. Walter has always appreciated this. He responds to her in his head, which almost seems like a conversation, at least to him. Sometimes an echolalic script comes out of his mouth - irrelevant, unbidden, unwelcome. People who don’t get it try to respond to the echolalia. Not Mom. She just says something else, and the conversation continues.
