Once in August long ago - Liam Nolan

This book is searingly honest. For some it may be an uncomfortable, for others, a disturbing read. Its raw honesty stems from the fact that when Liam Nolan first wrote it all down, it was a personal diary, for his eyes only. He recorded all his thoughts and feelings, all the things that happened and were said in the home and outside it, within and without the family, during one week in August long ago when he and his wife Oonagh's six-year-old autistic son came home for his holidays from the institution where he was placed in full-time care. It is in turns angry, shocking, confused, hilarious and heartbreaking. It reflects the mental anguish and stress caused to a young man and wife trying to deal with a child who had a condition no one understood, and many didn't want to try to understand. It is an account in which pain and laughter, hope and fantasising, bleakness and happiness and despair come together in a disquieting mix through which a strange and lovely child strides and screams -- and remains unaware, locked into his own strange unreachable world. Autism is a mystery -- less so now than in that time long ago. But still a mystery. And it can hit any family, any time, anywhere.