Book Review: The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon

Originally posted at my Goodreads Account. The original review can be found here. Also: If you don't have a goodreads account, and you're an active reader like me, I highly recommend it.

***Spoiler Alert***

Immediately after finishing The Speed of Dark, I was forced to sit down in a quiet corner for a few minutes and cry, shivering and trying to bring myself "back to planet earth" so to speak. That's how upset I was, as an autistic person, by Lou, the protagonist, meeting such a fate. There are very few adult autistic protagonists out there for me to relate to. The one I have been most strongly influenced by is Lisbeth Salander, of the Millennium Trilogy. Lou Arrendale, of The Speed of Dark, had great promise as another one that I could relate to. But, by the end of the novel, he is no longer Lou as I knew him in the rest of the novel. He had completely transformed into an unrecognisable neurotypical, because he had elected to have a new treatment which made him "normal", in the words of the book.
It's an upsetting, horrible realization of what was inevitable all along; in a society that did not respect Lou's disability, it would be only a matter of time before he was pressured by one thing or another into accepting the "cure" that was made available in the story.
But that doesn't mean that this was a bad book, or that Elizabeth Moon, the author, was condoning the disablist notion that autistic people would be better with a cure. Far from it. Lou's fate is tragic, and she makes this clear. He loses interest in the things he loves doing, he becomes detached from his friends, and his life takes on a bland desperation.
It leaves a grim impression towards the end, but before it slid down that sad road, I greatly enjoyed my journey with Lou, and felt great sympathy for him, living in such an uncertain world for people like him. I can relate as another autistic person who is extremely disturbed by the eliminationist rhetoric which surrounds conversations about autism in the mainstream. In one way, I envied the world Lou inhabited, because he received workplace accommodations I could only dream of. But he was in a hellish world for me, the last of his kind, and facing a future where it is certain that after he dies (or is "cured") there will be no more like him. There are no autistic elders for him to seek consolation or advice from, and no autistic children to guide and offer help to. A true nightmare, being an endangered species.
Lou seems content with many aspects of his life though, and has friends who are both neurotypical and autistic like him. He holds down a job doing pattern recognition, and is given the necessary tools to have a job, like a gym to stim, colourful accessories for his office, and breaks to listen to music. Heavenly.
However, in the eyes of one of his bosses, this is considered a nuisance, and he seeks to "cure" the auties working for his company in order to minimize what he sees as unnecessary expenses, to fund an expensive space project. This space project ends up being a sort of Chekhov's Gun for Lou after he is given the treatment, it is significant that it is the original catalyst in pushing for him to be cured.
As the novel progresses and it becomes unclear whether Mr Crenshaw, the boss, will have his way with the autistic employees, Lou's life is revealed to be one of orderly calm. It is disrupted, however, by this news of Mr Crenshaw's scheme, and his love for a neurotypical woman, which becomes a central point of his life as he grapples with whether to ask her out or not, and he feels the fallout of another man's jealousy, which takes a violent turn.
There are many other plot points in the story which seem unresolved or are simply dropped once Lou is "cured"; his relationship with a neuro-atypical woman named Emmy who sneers at him for hanging around "normals", but seems to harbour a crush on him, the autistic brother of another boss, Mr Aldrin, and the potential Lou has to become a fencing champion. All sort of sputter and die once the treatment drops the ball.
The writing isn't what I would call airtight, I mentioned earlier broken threads, and there is some meandering to the writing, and sometimes tangents which don't advance the story or plot, such as when Lou contemplates the fate of someone who attacked him. In this century, there's a rather Alex DeLarge style treatment used which cures violent impulses of criminals, and Lou spends much time musing on the implications of such technology, but never really comes to a fine point on how this relates to his upcoming treatment, and how his brain will be altered.
But the strength of Lou as a character, his tragic fate, and the pro-neurodiversity message outweigh the weaknesses. It may have an unhappy ending, but it is not the end for autism. Moon wrote this before the burgeoning of autistic self-advocacy, and I get the feeling that works like these which plea for understanding rather than hasty disablist cures will aid a rosier future for people with autism become a reality.

Fröken Salander & Me: How a misanthropic computer hacker will change autism in literature and life

Some Spoilers Ahead

The recent big hit that's taken the English-speaking literary world by storm is Stieg Larsson's posthumously published Millennium Trilogy.

Since I work in a bookstore, I tend to, in a small way, have my finger on the public pulse in terms of what's popular reading and what's not. And The Millennium Trilogy, consisting of, in chronological order, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor) The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden) and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes) have defied my usual, admittedly narrow-minded, expectations about what could become a bestseller in America. These are intelligently-written books that openly address misogyny, violence against women, sexism in the workplace, unfettered creepings of Nazism spreading through Europe like a sneaky STI, the treatment of both the police and the medical establishment of persons with disabilities and children, and AND the role that the media plays in manipulating the public in high profile cases. All while remaining a wonderfully written story that grips the imaginations of the reader and leaving them wanting more.

But this post isn't going to just be endless paragraphs of babbling praise for these modern masterpieces. You can read them in just about any newspaper or literary magazine if you wish. My specific wish is to talk about the most popular, controversial, (in)famous character in the novel, the "Girl" in the translated English titles of all three. Lisbeth Salander. She's being hailed as one of the greatest female characters to hit ink in the 21st century, she's already been captured onscreen by Noomi Rapace, and... she's autistic.

Ladies and gentleman, the literary paradigm regarding autism has been thrown off its feet.

It's not just revolutionary because it has a character with autism. It has a person with autism as one of the main characters (I don't think the word 'protagonist' is proper here) and often narrates using her point of view. Usually when this is attempted, it's clumsy and ham-fisted, and filled with overly flowery prose about connecting to the outside world, or else presents the person as a narrow-minded tabula rasa with no personality, only a long series of ramblings regarding interests in very obscure subjects (I'm looking at you, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time!) Salander however, is given the full force of a well-developed personality, and while she is presented with savant-like abilities, she is shown to be tormented by them, her photographic memory in particular.

I imagine this post might draw some ire from people who reject the notion that Salander is autistic. She is never properly diagnosed by the author as such, several characters, including a doctor, speculate that she has Asperger Syndrome. She also doesn't entirely fit into the stereotyped mold of autism, being in some ways emotionally vulnerable, having scars from abuses, and being actively sexual. Others may claim that since Salander is never officially diagnosed, labelling her as autistic is both a moot point and counterintuitive to the character, who is a complete individual that might sneer at the label of Aspergers after so many false diagnoses in the hands of abusive medical professionals.

But I saw myself in Lisbeth Salander. Like Salander, I've experienced hardships in my life and abuse at the hands of parental figures and authority figures, and I have some unusual talents, including a near-photographic memory (Though mine is not nearly as extensive as Salander's) Whether the character would accept the label or not, or whether she fills the entire criteria is not particularly relevant. Whether she likes it or not, Salander will change the way neurotypical authors portray autistic women, and any person with autism who reads the Trilogy will probably walk away with a different idea of what limits their diagnosis places on them.

What is particularly interesting to me as a woman with autism is the way that Larsson portrayed the pattern of abuse that Lisbeth experienced at the hands of her caretakers and people who were supposed to be in charge of her health and well-being. One of my major met peeves about portrayals of people with ASD, particularly ones with Asperger Syndrome, is to portray us more as victims of our own incompetence, poor social skills, and difficulty with verbal language and metaphor. Very rarely do neurotypicals take responsibility for isolating us, bullying us, abusing us, or turning us into pariahs for the crime of being different. But Larsson savages this illusion. Salander is a survivor who has been physically, emotionally, and sexually abused.

She is a child when it starts, and the fact that she is perceived as a "retard" (sic) makes it all the easier for her to be shuttled from one abusive caretaker to the next. Larsson's unflinching condemnation of Salander's abuse speaks for more than this girl with a dragon tattoo and enough emotional baggage to bring the strongest to their knees. It speaks for the systematic abuse of people on the entire spectrum of mental and physical disabilities. Larsson's native land of Sweden is the main target, but the message rings true in every nation, including my own America and Canada.

My hope is that Salander's fictional plight will cause the millions reading the Trilogy to reconsider the way that the disabled and vulnerable are treated outside of the pages of fiction. Though Salander and her plight are fictional, for disabled people across the world, it is a very real story.

Lisbeth somewhat fits the trope of an autistic savant, with her near-inhuman abilities in mathematics and computer hacking, and ingenious ways of getting herself out of difficult spots that any neurotypical would flounder in haplessly. But it is never mentioned whether this is a by-product of her autism, or a manifestation of her sheer will and intelligence after many years of having to cope with situations others can barely dream of. So it does not necessarily fall into the clichéd realm, but I hope it destroys the idea that people with autism are helpless outside of their narrow "obsessions" and have an incredible knack for self reliance and resourcefulness. We pretty much have to, facing constant abuse and isolation at the hands of neurotypicals. In the future, Lisbeth Salander's intelligence, resourcefulness, and ability to cope with the most incredible of circumstances will be in the minds of future authors when they pen a story about someone with autism.

Salander's sexuality will be the last thing I discuss in this post. But it's one of the more important things I want to address. Like me, Salander is bisexual. She has relationships with several characters in the book, most notably the main protagonist male, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and her on-again-off-again lover Miriam "Mimmi" Wu. Both relationships are shown to be tied up with complex emotions most people who are unfamiliar with autism probably assumed was exclusive to neurotypical people. Without giving away spoilers, I can say that her relationships with both Blomkvist and Wu are multifaceted and intricate with emotion, shattering the idea that people with ASD are incapable of having relationships rich in both their sexual chemistry and emotional compatibility. Salander is far from the asexual being of past incarnations of autism, and she is even less like the raging rapist that with Asperger Syndrome that has become all the rage in "ripped from the headlines" crime dramas. She is open and candid about her sexuality, and in spite of some characters that are less sympathetic and trustworthy calling her promiscuous or a whore, Salander is never victimized by her sexuality. She is fully in control of it, even when suffering the scars any rape victim goes through.

The abuse that Salander has experienced makes her more antisocial and misanthropic than the average person with ASD. The only character I can think of that even comes close to matching her in her disdain for humanity and its flaws is the infamous Rorschach of Watchmen fame. I predict that Salander will become just as much of a cultural icon as Rorschach has in the public psyche. With that kind of fame, I hope that Salander will stick a knife into the heart of stereotypes about people, especially women, with autism. Or else tattoo "I'm an antiquated anachronism, an old stereotype, and a cliché" onto its stomach.