Exiting Nirvana

Starred review from February 26, 2001
Thirty-four years after The Siege, Park's account of her autistic daughter's first eight years, she delineates Jessy's journey from being a barely verbal child to an adult fascinated with language and the mind. According to Park, Jessy exhibits many of the idiosyncratic mathematical obsessions associated with autism, but has fewer verbal skills than other autistic people. A superb artist, she stuns viewers with her dynamic paintings, which sell well. Her stable and happy life consists of painting; working in the mailroom at Williams College, where until recently her mother taught English; cooking; and doing most of the housework in the home she shares with her aging parents. Though a blessing, these achievements are fragile; Jessy can never live alone, she speaks English as if it were a second language and, equipped with even less understanding of emotions than most of us, cannot truly grasp nuanced human interaction. Park has been both mother and anthropologist, recording verbal and social breakthroughs and setbacks, administering praise and succor. She describes the serene insularity of the autist's "Nirvana," and observes collisions between the autistic and external worlds. She's urged Jessy to enter, "yet never entirely," the extraordinary dailiness inhabited by nonautistic people. In incisive, often exquisite prose, Park affords entry into Jessy's and her own remarkable journey between the two. Illus. (Mar. 8)Forecast:Oliver Sacks, who featured Jessy in his PBS series
The Mind Traveller, has contributed an enthusiastic introduction to this deserving book, which will appeal to readers of Karyn Seroussi and Bernard Rimland's
Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder (2000) and Temple Grandin and Oliver Sacks's
Thinking in Pictures (1996); expect healthy sales.

November 15, 2000
Williams College English professor Park continues the story she began in The Siege (1982), relating the experiences of her now-grown autistic daughter.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2001
Park's second book on her daughter Jessy (the first appeared in 1967, when Jessy was eight) is a perceptive, detailed, and empathetic account not of autism but of the experience of autism. Jessy has enjoyed major practical aid and loving support from her parents, many "Jessy-friends" (students and others who have lived with the Parks), and various teachers and researchers. Clara and her husband learned early the importance of "shared attention" with Jessy but were surprised to discover later that they had been unconsciously teaching her approaches. Jessy was interested in numbers, patterns, and living by routines. Disrupting those routines could lead to violent objections and wailing desolation. The chapters on Jessy's use of words, her sounds when speaking, and the use of personal contracts to motivate improvement in controlling problems are especially engaging. The account in them of Jessy's rare birthday wish for a wrist golf-counter that she used with the points listed in the contracts is delightful. A warm, levelheaded, neither overly optimistic nor overly glorified book that proves very rewarding.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)