Bad Animals: A Father's Accidental Education in Autism - Hardcover

Yanofsky, Joel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 161145414X ISBN 13: 9781611454147

Publisher: Arcade, 2012

Synopsis

Joel Yanofsky tried for years to start this memoir. It’s not just going to be about autism,” he told his wife, Cynthia. It’s going to be about parenthood and marriage, about hope and despair, and storytelling, too.” 
Marriage?” Cynthia said. What about marriage?” 

A veteran book reviewer, Yanofsky has spent a lifetime immersed in literature (not to mention old movies and old jokes), which he calls shtick. This account of a year in the life of a family describes a father’s struggle to enter his son’s world, the world of autism, using the materials he knows best: self-help books, feel-good memoirs, literary classics from the Bible to Dr. Seuss, old movies, and, yes, shtick. Funny, wrenching, and unfailingly candid, Bad Animals is both an exploration of a baffling condition and a quirky love story told by a gifted writer.

About this title

About the Author

Joel Yanofsky is the author of the essay collection Homo Erectus: And Other Popular Tales of True Romance, the novel Jacob’s Ladder, and the biography Mordecai & Me: An Appreciation of a Kind, which won the QWF Mavis Gallant Non-fiction Prize and the Canadian Jewish Book Award. He’s a regular book reviewer for the Montreal Gazette and has written for a variety of publications, including Canadian Geographic and the Village Voice. He’s won two National Magazine Awards as well as the Malahat Review’s Creative Nonfiction Prize. He lives in Montreal, Canada, with his wife, Cynthia, and his son, Jonah.

Review

"Bad Animals... offer(s) a sceptical, darkly humourous take on autism lacking in most of the literature out there.... I'd need a neck brace had I nodded every time Yanofsky described a situation I could relate to." -- Emily Donaldson, The Globe and Mail.

"(Bad Animals) is reflective, touching, humourous and heartbreaking. It is a memoir about life, witten by an extremely talented author." -- Kelly Wilton, Montreal Families

Edition details

• Publisher: Arcade
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 161145414X
• ISBN 13: 9781611454147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288