Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

Description

From the time he was three or four, John Elder Robison realised that he was different from other people. He was unable to make eye contact or connect with other children, much to his distress, and by the time he was a teenager his odd habits - such as a tendency to obsessively dismantle radios and dig five-foot holes (and stick his little brother in them) - had earned him the label 'social deviant'. It was not until he was forty that an insightful therapist told Robison he had the form of autism called Asperger's syndrome, transforming the way Robison saw himself - and the world. Look Me in the Eye is Robison's moving and blackly funny story of growing up with Asperger's syndrome at a time when the diagnosis didn't even exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes us inside the head of a boy whom teachers and other adults regarded as defective and who still has a peculiar aversion to using people's given names (he calls his wife Unit Two). Above all, you'll marvel at the way Robison overcame the restrictions of Asperger's to gain the connection he always craved: as a husband and father.

John Elder Robison is the older brother of Augusten Burroughs, the bestselling author of Running with Scissors. An electronics whizz who began his career creating showstopping special effects for the rock band Kiss, Robison has never let Asperger's stand in his way: he now has a successful business restoring vintage cars and is married with children.