The Woman Who Dived into the Heart of the World - Sabina Berman

I had an ambivalent reaction to this autism-from-the-inside story about a girl whose aunt finds her in a feral state and helps her to (almost) integrate back into society. 'Me' is an engaging character and her differences and perspective are well observed - I particularly enjoyed a scene where she is baffled that a crowd is moved to tears when her fear of public speaking leads her to sob while reciting a list of facts and figures about tuna processing, with her echolalia repeating certain phrases as though for emphasis. I also found myself constructively challenged by her disdain for the human emphasis on thinking and her eventual conclusion that the key to existence is to "plug back into the real world with every sense". However, I found her sophisticated level of language implausible for someone who acquired it so late, and it was unsettling that the way she used her unique perspective to devise innovative methods of humane fishing was so similar to the work of Temple Grandin, and yet this was not acknowledged anywhere in the book.