The Strangeness of Strange Son

I recently read Portia Iverson's book, Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism, and it was... strange.

Don't get me wrong. It was an easy read, fairly well-written, and interesting in its own way. But based on the title, wouldn't you expect it to be about, oh, I don't know, two mothers and two sons? Instead what we have is an autobiographical work by Iverson that focuses pretty much exclusively on her own experiences and only her point of view. For a lot of the time, really, just her. Her thoughts, her ideas, her lay-person scientific research, her struggle to get scientists to listen to her, etc., etc.

Despite the fact that she begins the book insisting that it was her own son's "descent" into autism that inspired her to undertake a research campaign, and for her and her husband to start the organization Cure Autism Now!, there is truly very little about her son in the book at all, until he begins to communicate. From page 16 until page 286, Dov is essentially invisible, which is a period that probably covers about 10 years of his life, though it's hard to tell, because his own chronology in the book is so rarely mentioned.

Instead, the vast majority of the book that isn't devoted to Iverson herself is devoted to Tito Mukhopadhyay, whose existence took the autism world by storm when he was first brought to public attention, as he has severe behavioral and sensory issues, but communicates quite fluently through independent writing. Iverson appears to spend all of her free time with Tito and his mother, Soma, convinced that Tito is a key to understanding low-functioning autism. She reports extensively on the conversations she and Tito have about his perceptions of the world, his thought processes, his life dreams. She also gives interesting accounts of his visits to various cognitive researchers to undergo tests. These appear to be largely frustrating experiences.

So there's a mother and a son. Where's the other mother? Iverson does talk about Tito's mother, Soma, more than she talks about her own son, Dov, because Soma is always there when Tito is there. She notes that it often seems that Tito cannot initiate communication without Soma there to prompt him. She does give Soma huge amounts of commendation for the apparent miracle she worked in getting Tito (and eventually Dov) to communicate. But I couldn't help thinking that the two mothers had a very odd relationship, what with Iverson being so obsessed with Tito, and Soma being so isolated from everything not related to him. Soma herself develops a strange fixation on whether or not she is Iverson's "best friend."

I was at times forcefully reminded of the mother/other mother's child relationship seen in the movie Spanglish, where the Anglo mother "adopts" the Mexican nanny's daughter because she's so much smarter and prettier than her own daughter. The near complete absence of Iverson's own son from the book, who cannot communicate and remains at the same level he was at when he was 5, compared with her fascinated exchanges with Tito, who is the shining star of the severe autism world, is perhaps more revelatory than Iverson might wish.

However, the book does give an interesting sort of backstage view into the world of autism research in the early 90s*, as well as detailing some very interesting insights into the life of Tito (though admittedly from her perspective only), who is truly an fascinating individual in his own right. What's more, Iverson's own theories about low-functioning autism and brain functioning are intriguing, and do leave the reader wondering if anyone's ever followed up on them. So it's not that I don't think people should be interested in or read the book, it's just that I found it rather... strange.

*I will admit that her claim early on in the book about there being "no research" on autism before she and her husband started CAN really put me off. Just what is it my mother and all her colleagues were doing all those years while I was growing up, then? So, yeah, take things in this book with a shaker of salt.