Shtum

Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. It draws you in from the very first page and tells a heartbreaking story of a family with an autistic son. One thing I found really interesting what that though this story is about a child with autism, it's really more about the father and how he copes with a child who is unable to talk and look after himself.

This book is an emotional rollercoaster from the very beginning and it's a rollercoaster you won't want to get off. Once you're introduced to Jonah you become fascinated with this life he lives and you won't want to put the book down till the story is over.

However my one tiny complaint about this book would be that the ending dragged on quite a bit. I assumed that the story would conclude with the results of Jonah's tribunal, but it did not. The father still had some issues to work through (because it really is the father's story). But I did feel that it had been tacked on at the end life an afterthought after what felt like the natural conclusion to the story.

But this still managed to be a very enjoyable read. I've seen it compared to The Storied Life of AJ Fikry and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time (though I haven't read either of those so can't verify those claims). Either way this is a story that is definitely worth a read.

Ben is the father of Jonah, a severely autistic 10-year-old boy, and is struggling to cope with both this huge responsibility as a newly single parent to his son and pretty much every other responsibility in his life. Above all this is a book about father/son relationships. Jonah is incapable of both communicating effectively or showing affection, while at the same time Ben has never felt truly loved by his own father, Georg.

I was really moved to read as these three characters grew to understand each other. Georg and Jonah in particular were wonderful characters. Ben is never particularly likeable and it's clear that he has made some very poor decisions due to his lack of self-esteem and motivation, but it's easy enough for the reader to emphasise with him in this situation. My one compliant with the characterisation is that I felt that the female characters should have been a lot more involved in the plot. Emma, Ben's soon-to-be-ex, and Ben's mum (was she even named?) were portrayed as very one-dimensional in the few mentions we get of them, and I just don't believe that to be realistic in this situation or fair to these characters. I never really understood the relationship between Ben and Emma, and how it felt apart, because we are never really shown what they were like together early on or how they fit together as a couple. It makes it hard to sympathise with them when you don't really understand the hows and whys.

Overall, this was a simple, but very touching story on family life and the importance of communicating with one another.