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Contents

Title Page

Author’s Note

Vaughan

Kana

Warren

Naoise

Billy

Amanda

Cédric

Ayo

Danny

Acknowledgements  

Copyright

Author’s Note

This is a book about the neurodivergent present, its past and possible futures, as told through the true stories of nine contemporary men and women on the autism spectrum. They come from England, Wales and Ireland; Canada, Australia and the United States; from France, Nigeria and Japan. They are children of the nineties and the eighties, of the seventies, sixties, fifties and forties. They have found fame in Hollywood, confronted head-on the world’s violence, earned a doctorate in psychology, entered national politics, solved a homicide case, performed orthopaedic surgery, published a breakout novel, learned to see with the ears and to speak through a computer device. Together they form a unique group portrait of neurodiversity.

In collecting these stories I have thought about the many years of medical progress and societal change that made this project possible. Increasingly specialists understand autism less in terms of disorder, a problem to be solved, and more as a natural cognitive difference – infinitely variable – found in between 1–2 per cent of the general population. It was not so long ago, however, that these lives were deemed unfit for literature; if they went into print at all, it was often only as a list of symptoms in some doctor’s case study. A reader could be forgiven then for believing that they possessed no vivid hopes or fears, no dreams or sense of destiny, none of the depth and complexity on which a universal story depends. Of course, in this they were not alone: LGBT and Black stories, for instance, were for a long time similarly erased or marginalised. If, today, these and other minorities and minoritised communities are finding their voice and rightful place on bookshelves, the significant gaps where neurodivergent stories should be, while narrowing, still remain. It is precisely in order to fill such a gap that this book exists.

Over the past twenty years now I have written the stories, beginning with my own, of those who perceive the world in radically different ways. In that time my writing has evolved across genres – memoir, essay, fiction, poetry, literary reportage – the better to capture and illuminate for the general reader the many intricacies of the neurodiverse experience. I am ever grateful to all those who entrust their stories to me, who honour me with their faith that I will locate the form and the words that I hope can do them justice. As I work to recreate their lives on the page, drawing on extensive research, in-depth interviews and my writer’s intuition to set scenes, articulate thoughts and reconstruct dialogue, my goal is that they become characters but never caricatures. I intend to show their layers, their capacity to grow and change, their quest for meaning. Occasionally I show sides of themselves they might never have noticed or understood before.

Nine Minds was researched and written over a period of four years, 2019 to 2023, based on hundreds of hours of conversations. Coinciding with the Covid pandemic, these moving and fascinating exchanges took place over email and video call – a mode of communication often privileged, as it happens, by neurodivergent people. The men and women I reached out to had previously spoken in the media about their neurodiversity, which in most cases is how I first came across their stories. From the outset, as I listened, asked questions and scribbled a mountain of notes, my ambition was to recreate the rich inner worlds they described so precisely and evocatively (to which end, my explicit presence in these narratives, while varying from one to the next, is minimal). Worlds so much richer than the dry, bland accounts that continue to appear in print about minds on the spectrum, in texts captive to neurotypical ideas of autism written in neurotypical words. Where, for example, a scientific article might mention ‘highly restricted, fixated interests’, the men and women I exchanged with spoke instead of their ‘passions’; where a press report would refer to a neurodivergent man’s ‘eccentricity’, I discerned rather his willingness to transgress social codes.

Evading such limiting clichés, defying outdated prejudices, the nine minds that I portray testify each in their own way to the singular power and beauty of the autistic imagination, and to the daring freedom with which they invent their lives.

Vaughan

‘And of course, each fracture has its own personality,’ Vaughan said to the intern beside him, halting at a bed in the orthopaedic unit of South Health Campus. ‘Let’s see what we have here, for example, shall we?’

The elderly inpatient gamely lifted her left arm to both men, as if on cue. The bony arm and transparent skin added to the general impression of great age, though in fact she was only five years older than Vaughan – seventy-nine.

Vaughan took in the bruised hand, reckoned the impairment, noted the occasional flinch. He sensed the sadness in those downcast fingers; how dejected they looked.

‘A nasty fall,’ he said to his young colleague. ‘We get a fair few like them this time of year. Optimists raring to get out and about, mistaking April here for spring.’

The trainee surgeon had been staring thoughtfully at the ailing hand and wrist. ‘Do you even get spring in Calgary?’ he asked quietly. His accent was American.

Young surgeons, and getting ever younger, came from all over to train under Vaughan, who was known as one of the very best hand and wrist surgeons around. The patient said, ‘Black ice in the parking lot.’

‘That would do it,’ said Vaughan. ‘You have osteoporosis, I assume?’ He assumed right.

The woman sat up as she listened to the older surgeon say to the younger, ‘What are your thoughts?’

‘Distal radius fracture.’

‘Radiographs are normal,’ Vaughan said. He was testing the American.

‘Umm,’ said the trainee. ‘Yes, but distal radius and scaphoid fractures can sometimes be radiographically occult.’

This was good. ‘Why might we think that’s the case here?’ Vaughan prodded.

‘The patient’s age and sex. Osteoporosis.’ And together these factors heightened the clinical suspicion for fracture.

‘Very good. Next step?’

‘CT or MRI without IV contrast to exclude or confirm fracture.’

There’d been no MRI back when Vaughan was starting out. His own mentors had had to rely on the incomplete picture given by X-rays and physical exams.

‘Or cast the arm and repeat radiographs in ten to fourteen days.’

At that moment the woman leaned back on her pillow and the mentor and his young charge reassured her and lowered their voices as they left the unit.

Vaughan had long excelled at this form of mentoring – what researchers call cognitive apprenticeship, in which thought processes are voiced and discussed and experience is shared. It was ironic how sharply this professional excellence contrasted with Vaughan’s personal life, which had long been messy. Messy, he thought to himself, was an understatement. Sometimes he wondered why no cognitive apprenticeship exists for learning to be a son or a father, a husband or a human being. All his life his only choice had been to teach himself to pass as neurotypical (a word, like MRI, not in any of his old undergrad textbooks), though he hadn’t always pulled it off. But his endurance had told, and in a career spanning fifty years medical advances had transformed many lives and, more recently, his own self-understanding.

Now, nearing well-earned retirement, he looked back on his life and career, took stock and followed his memories where they led him.

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