A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards

What strikes me the most about this book isn't even so much the plot itself, or the autism-related storyline, which is what draws many, I think, but the laid-bare view of a mother's fierce but sometimes ambivalent attitude about sacrificing everything for her children. This mother is intensely human...she lives and dies with her kids, even more so because one is ill, and her love for them is limitless. But you can see the struggle, the pain, the affect on her marriage. She (literally) vows to give up absolutely everything for her kids, and by the end in many ways, she does. You can see the way in which mothering nourishes her, and in such a critical way, because sometimes it's all she has. Sometimes motherhood is such a maze of competing priorities...trying to balance what your children need, you need, your marriage needs. When health and education issues arise, trying to figure out if there is a point where something is hurtful or helpful, and making a choice not knowing sometimes which way it will go but believing it is best with the information you have at that moment. Her love for her kids is so pure and base, rather than cerebral, and you can see how others view her situtation, and even her choice to have children so dispassionately, while for her it is simply as necessary and natural as breathing. As a mother you can really relate to how no one really knows you true family dynamic, or can sometimes understand your choices without being in your life, which of course they can not be. If you are a mother, of even what are outwardly the "easiest" or trouble-free kids, you will find in this mother your deepest darkest doubts and insecurities, as well as your core strength and love, all portrayed in this struggling character and fantastic writing. It is sometimes painful to read, but a worthy mirror of mothers' love.

I loved this book on 2 levels: First, having an autistic nephew, I found much in the story that was eerily similar to our own experiences, sometimes with much different reactions and outcomes, though. Nice to see it through another's eyes. Second, Ann Bauer is a gifted story teller. The story captivates the reader with both it's portrayals of the circumstances and the emotional journey of the mother (and father to some extent.) This is not only a story of an autistic child, but is a story of motherhood and a marriage. Don't miss this book. (Beware, some of the reviews below give away far too much of the storyline. I suggest reading only part way if you'd rather wait for the book to give you all the story. Why do reviewers do this?? How inconsiderate.)

I'm blown away. I've been waiting for this book ever since I read some of Ann Bauer's earlier writing: she has a storyteller's knack for writing about the fierce, determined love mothers feel in difficult and confusing situations, situations that don't resolve themselves completely. Bauer writes characters that feel deeply real, human and flawed and admirable and, at times, dislikable. The story has a central focus: a young couple's talky, brilliant son slides mysteriously to the edges of his own mind, skating into territory that sometimes looks like autism, sometimes looks like something else. The book watches the marriage, and the people in it, shift to accommodate the son's mysterious changes. But the story's about more than that: it asks what happens in a family as a result of all that shifting. It asks us to feel a love so fierce, in a situation so pressing, and to question the lengths we'd go to, if that were us. The prose is beautiful, never overwritten, happening in lines that are tight and rhythmically beautiful. Easily the best book I've read this year.

As I read this book, I could feel all the emotions the mother in this story was feeling. I have twin boys who were diagnosed with PDD at age 3. For two years I endured the endless doctor appointments, comments from family, jealousy toward my friends "perfect" children. The author does a great job of showing the reader the struggles parents, particularly mothers, might go through when one of their children has a disability and the hope they so desparately hang onto. I love the characters, particularly Rachel, because I can see myself in her. Needless to say, my boys were misdiagnosed! They are healthy, happy, well adjusted 10 year olds. Never give up hope.

This book works on so many levels. It gives us insight into how people with all kinds of cognitive disorders find incomprehensible the world that we take for granted. The book also lets us see into the hearts of two mothers, separated by half a century, who face the terror of losing sons. And it makes an argument, a convincing argument, that sometimes the things we want most in life come at a great price. Ms. Bauer's writing is clear, lucid, and beautiful. A remarkable first novel from an author I have no doubt we will be seeing more of.