When the music stops, the rest is silence.

[seanan_mcguire]

I've spoken before about how much I read, and about how much I seek for representation in fiction, both for myself, and for the sake of the people that I care about. How much it hurts when you're the token, or invisible, or the person that doesn't exist. How hard it is to accept that somehow, often through no fault of your own, you're the sort of person who doesn't get to be the star of stories, or even a major supporting character. And about how wonderful it is when that somehow, against all odds, you open a book and see yourself, or your friends.

Yesterday, I read Silence, by Michelle Sagara. She's a fellow DAW author, a sweet, smart lady, and an all-around neat person whom I adore both personally and professionally. But before yesterday, I have never wanted to hug her for an hour and thank her forever.

Silence is a solid, interestingly-told YA novel that seems, superficially, to be just another wave in the current flood of YA supernatural. Being a wave isn't bad; I write urban fantasy, I am basically sponsoring a surfing competition. But there's something wonderful about diving into a wave and discovering infinitely more.

Emma, our protagonist, talks to dead people. She has several close female friends, including Allison, who would be a stereotypical geek in some stories, and Amy, who would be just as stereotypically a mean girl. Yet they work, and they make sense, because they are genuinely written as people. It's not presented as criminal to be smart, or to be pretty: it's just who you are. Emma's greatest asset is her niceness, a genuine generosity of spirit that is so very rare in heroines today. She reminded me of Vixy, and that's about the highest praise I have.

But really, where this book won me, and why I recommend it so readily, was when we met Michael. Michael, who is a high-functioning autistic who has been going to school with Emma and the others since kindergarten. Michael, who is in advanced math and science classes and doing just fine, thank you. Michael, whose friends care about him and look out for him, and who value his friendship and his place in their lives. He is presented with limitations, but so is every other character in the book. He's presented as a person, and for that alone, I will love Michelle forever.

Read Silence. Read it because it's awesome, and read it because any author who includes a complex, well-written, believable, believably autistic central character deserves our applause, and book sales are the best form of clapped hands, for an author.

My hat is off to her.

Comments

[reedrover]

Thank you for the recommendation! I appreciate you taking the time to explain why this book is good, and why we should buy and read it. (Not like I don't already LOVE Michelle Siguara for the Chronicles of Elantra series, but...)

I will buy it TODAY... and read it when I'm done with Grave Mercy...

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[reedrover]

I forgot to tell you... I read it on Saturday. THANK YOU for that recommendation. I think it's the best book I've read so far this year. YUM.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[sheistheweather]

Definitely going to read it.

Thank you for the in-depth review of why it's worth it.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

On my list it goes!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

I will have to check this book out. Thanks for the recommendation.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I just want every family I know with an autistic kid to have this in their library, for when it's time to break out the YA.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Very welcome.

[corinneduyvis.livejournal.com]

I am autistic and struggle to think of ANY autistic character in fiction that doesn't make me wince.

So... this gives me hope. I'll check it out. Thank you.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I really love how Michael is written. Not handled, because he's not handled; he's a person, and it's amazing.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to pick this up when my TBR gets a wee bit more manageable. Glad to hear it's such a home run for you!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I was thrilled.

[cahill42.livejournal.com]

Too many books, too little time. But this is definitely going on my list. :)

Oh, and am re-reading Feed and Deadline in anticipation of Blackout, and am re-convinced that you are truly an evil genius. :D

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[kat-merle.livejournal.com]

I love her for some of the other books she has written but I will definitely bump this to the top of the must buy list so I can read it and pass it along to a friend who has recently been struggling with the stresses of being a parent of an autistic child so she can share it with him. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Of course.

[thebluerose.livejournal.com]

Im guessing but its possible she uses her own son as a model for this character. She has been blogging about her experiences with him from a baby, and how they learned to deal together as a family. He has Aspergers to some reasonable level and I found it really very interesting.

So there may be an added element of 'real' and that would be why. She is on LJ

http://msagara.livejournal.com/

[amber-fool.livejournal.com]

I was going to recommend that - I have no experience with anyone on the spectrum, but it's been fascinating reading her posts about how she and her family have raised her son to be just a person in control of his world, who happens to have a different perspective.

I haven't read Silence yet (no disposable income, and no disposable time with moving and disability applications), but none of her books (Sun Sword, Elantra, or Sundered) have ever disappointed me.

[thedragonweaver.livejournal.com]

"I have no experience with anyone on the spectrum"

Actually, you may not know that you have experience with anyone on the spectrum. There is a wide swath of the autism spectrum that can present as neurotypical—you wouldn't know it unless they told you. It's a sensory processing issue and can manifest itself in odd ways.

And I say this because after we got a diagnosis of our son as mildly autistic (as in, stick him in a special ed preschool so he learns coping techniques rather than having to develop them himself and he'll probably be mainstreamed by the time he hits third grade), my husband started noticing interesting developmental parallels with his childhood.

We're considering getting a diagnosis just to clear things up, but we're pretty sure based on the evidence that he was exactly the same autism profile as our son, and nobody noticed because he just seemed to be a bright, somewhat geeky kid*.

*His mother insists that no, he couldn't possibly be on the spectrum. Which is amusing, since she's the one who pushed us to get our kid tested & into therapy. She was a special ed teacher and may have instinctively compensated.

[amber-fool.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. Especially since I went to a college packed full of the smart kids that couldn't get dates in high school because all they were interested in was math and science. I just wouldn't think they were odd, really, because it seems like a good interest to me.

And as I thought about it, I do know someone, although not well - a coworker's son is somewhere on the spectrum, although I don't know where. I remember she had a hard time one day when the schools had a snow day, but we didn't, and he couldn't understand why there wasn't school and it wasn't a holiday.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

It's very possible, and I've read her LJ (she's a friend of mine). I just didn't want to be the girl going "she can write autism because she has an autistic son you guys!" in case she really didn't draw on him at all while creating Michael. It seemed...dismissive for me to assume that, you know?

[amber-fool.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. If a writer who genuinely wants to accurately portray someone with a characteristic they have no direct experience with (whether it be race, gender, sexual orientation/identity, disability, etc.) cannot do it, even with research and outreach and maybe volunteer work for assistance or equality, then how can a society integrate these parts into a whole? Michelle just had a head start on the learning process for that characteristic that she doesn't have.

Her posts are fascinating, though. I love the way they let their son have some control, so he could let go of some of the schedule rigidity. It's really just an extension of any parent-child relationship, just more obvious - with a helicopter parent, you get a young adult in college who doesn't know how to deal well with new situations. If the parents start letting their offspring have more and more control of their lives as they get older, they're more comfortable with themselves and changes in their environment.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

I've requested it from the (very excellent) local library. They already have it on order, which made me happy.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

My high-functioning autistic is named Number One Son, rather than Michael, but I know what you mean by your description. We're *totally* getting a copy of this, and Seanan - thank you.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Very welcome. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

[groblek.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendation. She's already made my "Would buy their shopping list if it were published" list for authors, but this tells me I should get two copies - one for a friend who's raising an autistic son.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Excellent.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It is indeed awesome, and Michael is a fine, fine character.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Absolutely.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

*adds to to-buy list*

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[tinachristopher.livejournal.com]

Michelle is an awesome, awesome writer. She also shared her experiences with growing up with an autistic son on LJ. I hadn't heard about Silence, I'll definitely buy it. I believe probably most of what Michael experiences Michelle experienced as well.

Thanks for the great recommendation.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Sure!

[hoppytoad79.livejournal.com]

I definitely need to get my hands on this book. It sounds awesome.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

It really is.

[ironed_orchid]

That sounds exactly like what i want from supernatural YA.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

I was surprised and delighted, and that's all I can ask.

[kyra-neko-rei.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, interesting.

I adore her Chronicles of Elantra but haven't touched anything else yet (being uncertain as to what's too dark for me to handle well); I'll see about this one.

I go to the bookstore as of late and the "teen dark romance" section is bigger than the general teen section and I have trouble telling the good stories from the "hey, profitable bandwagon!" Twilight clones, although to be fair I should know that anything by Michelle Sagara at the very least isn't follow-the-fad tripe. Anybody else got recommendations for good things from that genre?

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

It sort of depends on what you're looking for.

[kyra-neko-rei.livejournal.com]

Good point. I hadn't thought beyond "tell me what you like and I'll check it out," assuming that what people around here like is at least well-written.

As for personal preferences: heroine has her own life and talents and doesn't drop everything to revolve around the boy; no violence to animals; as few consent issues as possible (especially from the love interest(s); happy ending, or at least treading water in the punchbowl of life/afterlife/undeath. Bonus points for funny.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

Check out anything by Stacy Jaye or Teri Lynn Childs. I'm a big fan of Rachel Vincent's YA, and Lili Saint-Crow's YA, too. Oh, and you should check out Jeri Smith-Ready's YA.