Somebody Somewhere 2015-07-11

[royinpink]

royinpink submitted a new resource:

Somebody Somewhere - One autistic woman's journey of self-understanding, from "her world" and into "the world"

From Donna Williams' website:

Published in 1995, Somebody Somewhere is Donna's Williams' second number one international bestseller in the mainstream publishing world. It is the second book in the autobiographical series and like each book can be read as a stand alone book.

Diagnosed in the 1960s as psychotic at the age of two when autism was known as Childhood Psychosis, Donna has lived 26 years believing she was...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Mia]

Looks like a very interesting read, I'll have to look into it. Kudos royinpink

 

[BillyMack]

Great book. Read Nobody Nowhere too. Recommended

 

[tree]

Here Donna Williams reads some of Nobody Nowhere,
the first in her group of books about her life experiences.

 

[Babyc]

Indeed..an interesting book. Must have it!

 

[toothless]

ive always been a bit wary about reading anything from donna williams,as there has been contreversy as to whether she actually has autism or is it just the personality disorders she was diagnosed with.

 

[tree]

@toothless
I read several of her books and found them
very interesting. She had a rough childhood,
treated similar to a dog, I thought.

Considering all the sensory issues she
had, it surprises me that she managed to
live to be able to learn and to enjoy life, and
not just be in a constant state of confused
misery.

 

[Aeolienne]

When I read Somebody Somewhere followed by its sequel Like Colour to the Blind I was astounded at how quickly Donna Williams made her way up the British property ladder. Seemingly on the spur of the moment she decided to stay in England after having shipped her luggage to Australia and managed to rent a cottage in Essex - get that, a whole cottage on her own, not a shared flat - with a piano too. By the next book she'd managed to buy a house in Wales with her then husband while letting out the Essex cottage (which would imply that she owned the latter property outright by then - did she buy it from her landlord?). Oh for those halcyon days of knock-down property prices in the early 90s...

That aside … Somebody Somewhere had some interesting bits but was a bit disjointed, while Like Colour to the Blind could have done with a lot more copy-editing. There is far too much description of mundane details (including TV commercials and flatulence, for crying out loud!), intermingled with stuff about Donna obssessing over her "defences" and wanting to check everything. I couldn't help thinking that if her time had been taken up with a regular 9-17 job or the hunt for one (like us lesser mortals) she'd have had far less occasion for all that. Another thing that strikes me as odd is that DW is an artist, yet in all her account of her time living in Essex she apparently never bothered to visit the countryside which had inspired John Constable. Also, despite her being sufficiently interested in German culture (one assumes) to have learnt the language fluently and have spent some time in Germany (this according to Somebody Somewhere), none of the groundbreaking changes taking place in Germany or post-Communist Europe generally at the time evidently made much of an impression on her.

I know it's none of my business how people chose to spend their lives, but I can't help thinking that if I were privileged enough to have an expenses-paid sabbatical in Australia I'd hope to do far more with my time then loaf around at home watching TV commercials.