Upward Bound
Not a good novel for a nonspeaking autistic person; it’s a good novel, period ... Flourishes of poetic grandness are relatively sparse in these pages. Brown is typically content with the careful accumulation of ordinary details and muted feelings that have fermented into a private liquor of determination ... A signature gentleness speaks through all these characters. Brown inhabits every one with an uncanny sensitivity to their hopes and anxieties.
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Brown’s sly sense of humor and ability to inhabit, without condescension, the experiences of those often marginalized, including the bumbling but well-intentioned caregivers, make the novel both quietly surprising and gently enlightening.
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Brown...offers a vanishingly rare glimpse of the interiority of nonverbal autistic adults and a critique of the well-meaning but often misguided neurotypical people in their orbits. It’s jarring to have multiple characters use the R-word to describe those neurologically different from themselves—whether that’s a neurotypical person describing an autistic person or an autistic person describing someone with more profound disabilities. Perhaps Brown’s point is that it’s human nature to punch down—a sobering note in a novel that’s mostly full of humor and charm. A debut novel that truly breaks new ground.
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