Shtum

Jem Lester

Orion/Hachette

Otago Daily Times, May 21st 2016

Popular media is not short on stories about individuals at various points along the autism spectrum with ‘special talents’ that compensate for (or are the price of) their condition. Far fewer deal with the realities of living with and loving somebody who may never progress beyond the social and emotional level of a pre-verbal child. For parents faced with this reality, including Shtum’s author, ‘romanticised’ fictional accounts such as Rainman or The Rosie Project can seem a direct negation of their daily existence.

Ben Jewell, the novel’s narrator, is one such father. With his marriage and his business both disintegrating, he and his profoundly autistic son, Jonah, have moved back in with his father in an attempt to convince the powers that be that Jonah needs to attend a specialist residential school.  Although his wife initially described this relocation as a temporary arrangement, it soon becomes clear that not only is the separation permanent, she is also handed all responsibility for fighting (and paying for) the specialist care their son needs.

But rather than face reality, Ben prefers to leave his father take over Jonah’s care and lose himself in drink. Then his father is diagnosed with a fast-moving and untreatable cancer and Ben, who has never finished anything in his life, is forced speak for his son, the one person who truly needs him. And in giving Jonah the voice he does not have, Ben also realises his son communicates more in his silence than he, with all his words, ever can.   

What stands out most vividly in the novel is the immense difficulty of caring for Jonah. Ben’s guilt, grief, anger, frustration, fear and fatigue are juxtaposed against moments of calmness, laughter, or reciprocated affection that are all the more precious for their rarity, but which cannot compensate for the complications that surround every aspect of daily life.

Less successful is the other thread of the story, which deals with Ben’s relationship with his own father, a Polish Jew who refuses to talk about his past and clearly regards his only child as useless. These sections are less convincing and, I felt, unnecessary. Shtum is the product of a MA novel writing course, and I can’t help wondering if this part of the story-arc, with its carefully constructed alternative father-son dyad and revelatory conclusion, was constructed to ensure the novel conforms to accepted conventions of structure and character development.

I think Jonah’s story is strong enough to stand alone as an honest account of a situation that is seldom talked about and an example of why sometimes letting go can be as an act of both survival and of love. It is also a stinging indictment of a social system that looks for the cheapest possible solution to a complex problem rather than providing the support which children like Jonah and their families need and deserve.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/reality-autism-depicted