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Parallel Play: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Asperger's |  | Author: Tim Page
Publisher: Doubleday
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $13.00
as of 11/25/2009 05:45 CST details
You Save: $13.00 (50%)
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Seller: zp_books
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 7456
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0385525621
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.1968588320092
EAN: 9780385525626
ASIN: 0385525621
Publication Date: September 8, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: John Elder Robison Reviews Parallel Play
John Elder Robison is a writer, speaker, and advocate. He is the author of Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s. Read Robinson's exclusive Amazon guest review of Parallel Play:
 The first time I saw Tim Page, I felt a sense of familiarity. He was obviously smart but shy, socially awkward, with a different cadence to his voice. There was an undefined, instinctive "something" that told me Tim was a fellow Aspergian. I feel different and excluded from much human company, but people like Tim are an exception. They are my people. They are me. Tim says he’s lived life as an outsider, and that’s exactly how I feel too. As a result, even though I’ve grown up to find commercial success, happiness often eludes me. Within minutes of meeting Tim, it was clear he felt the same. Neurotypical people try to welcome us into their world, but Asperger’s blinds us to the olive branches of friendship they proffer. They even shake the leaves in front of our faces, but we just gaze, impassive and oblivious. People assume we’ve rejected them, but in truth we want their friendship and acceptance with every fiber of our being. That’s the heartbreak of it. Tim’s story illustrates that reality with clear and moving prose. Even when he’s been with people, much of his life has been spent alone. He was always smart, but like me, I wonder what it’s been for. His book shows that genius has its benefits but it’s not a formula for happiness or even general life success. You’ll wonder if his extraordinary abilities are a cause or a result of his isolation. Or are they just more facets of a unique mind? Anyone with an interest in Asperger’s and the complexity of the human mind will be fascinated by Parallel Play. It will leave you with much to think about.--John Elder Robison (Photo © Rick Colson)
Product Description
An affecting memoir of life as a boy who didn’t know he had Asperger’s syndrome until he became a man.
In 1997, Tim Page won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work as the chief classical music critic of The Washington Post, work that the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” Three years later, at the age of 45, he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome–an autistic disorder characterized by often superior intellectual abilities but also by obsessive behavior, ineffective communication, and social awkwardness.
In a personal chronicle that is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Page revisits his early days through the prism of newfound clarity. Here is the tale of a boy who could blithely recite the names and dates of all the United States’ presidents and their wives in order (backward upon request), yet lacked the coordination to participate in the simplest childhood games. It is the story of a child who memorized vast portions of the World Book Encyclopedia simply by skimming through its volumes, but was unable to pass elementary school math and science. And it is the triumphant account of a disadvantaged boy who grew into a high-functioning, highly successful adult–perhaps not despite his Asperger’s but because of it, as Page believes. For in the end, it was his all-consuming love of music that emerged as something around which to construct a life and a prodigious career.
In graceful prose, Page recounts the eccentric behavior that withstood glucose-tolerance tests, anti-seizure medications, and sessions with the school psychiatrist, but which above all, eluded his own understanding. A poignant portrait of a lifelong search for answers, Parallel Play provides a unique perspective on Asperger's and the well of creativity that can spring forth as a result of the condition.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 Entertaining, but not really about Asperger's November 4, 2009
Karen Breeding (philadelphia)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you're looking for any kind of insight into Asperger's syndrome, you're not going to find it here. The title of the book is very misleading, and while it's very readable and funny and an entertaining light read (I finished it in a little over one afternoon), the childhood of Mr. Page didn't strike me as all that different or more difficult than a precocious child growing up in an upper middle class family. In fact, other than Mr. Page's obsession with classical music, he seems pretty normal, and while he makes repeated reference to difficulties getting along with others (that he attributes to his undiagnosed Asperger's), none of these experiences are ever fleshed out, and only mentioned in the most superficial manner. In fact, he seems to have had an awful lot of loving, caring, and fulfilling relationships throughout his childhood: he had best friends, and girlfriends, played in a rock band, and joined in the usual teenage rebellions (drugs and sex).
The cynic in me wonders if Mr. Page's Asperger diagnosis wasn't played up in order to attract an audience to this book that perhaps wouldn't be too interested in reading about the childhood of a classical music prodigy.
 An unrevealing memoir about another rich kid November 3, 2009
Library CD Borrower (Boston, MA)
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
I read this book because I also was diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult, and my girlfriend happens to live in Chaplin, a town near his hometown of Storrs, CT and which even gets a couple of passing mentions.
How could a memoir that so strongly emphasizes his childhood be so devoid of details about his relationship with his immediate family? Why is his adult life and marriage given such short shrift? I would have to say that the description he gives of his childhood has nothing much to do with his difficulty with having Asperger's. His upbringing has less to do that that and more to do with being raised in a well-off family, who vacationed for a year in Venezuela, and happened to have classical records lying around the home and a university in their backyard. I had no idea what he was talking about when he talked about specific works of music or movies that influenced him. Unless you are already a well-versed fan of classical music and classic movies, you'll have no idea what he is talking about either. (My difficulty with classical music has always been understanding the musical jargon and remembering which song is what, since there are no lyrics to identify what I might hear on the local classical music station.) He also said he had his first sex was at 15 years old and that he is still friends with so many of his friends he made in childhood. As part of the counterculture in his teenage years, he also seemed to have partied a good deal, doing drugs and drinking well before he turned 18. This doesn't sound like the struggles of someone with Asperger's but rather the experiences of your average kid coming of age at that time and place (around 1970).
I ended up disliking him the further into the book he got. So he partied a lot during the seventies and made lots of friends; his parents gave him the right tools to grow his classical music tastes, such as sending him to vacation camps to Tanglewood; and his parents were able to pay for him to live in his own New York City apartment so he could attend a small private music school and then Columbia University. Well I would have to at least assume that his parents paid for gun to live there. He didn't talk about any jobs you had while living in New York other than briefly working in a record store and being fired relatively quickly, and his parents have already have paid for other things for him. And the book provides very little insight to any of his interpersonal relationships and any true difficulties he struggled with. The book mentions just about zero about his siblings. He certainly did not talk any detail about the failure of his marriage and the strained relationship he had with his own children when they grew up. He talks about his own children as if they were born, he separated, and it just wasn't something he was very good at, in a couple of sentences only.
Well, gee, I guess this book is just about the struggles of another self-centered rich kid who had all kinds of opportunity and was lucky enough to party a lot, do drugs and fail in school, and still be successful and live a charmed life. This is not memoir material fit for publishing, and doesn't much help the reputation of classical music for anyone who may be more curious about it. From reading this biography, he comes across as just another snobby music critic who was born in the right circumstances. Take the "Growing up with Asperger's" part of the subtitle and I might have less of an objection to this book, although I still would not like it.
 Another Beautiful Book from Tim Page November 2, 2009
Whats My Line (NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mr. Page has once again produced a fully readable book, interesting and sincere, open and big-hearted. I wouldn't miss a thing he writes, having been a fan ever since he wrote the Dawn Powell biography--a work that actually changed my life.
All about Me October 29, 2009
DaveMcG
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is well-written and humorous in spots, but ultimately unsatisfying. Those with Asberger's Syndrome do not relate effectively with people around them, and Tim tells us one side of every story -- his, even when he is describing heart-breaking situations that also impacted others. For instance, he briefly writes about his happy second marriage, but does not explain or seem to accept any responsibility for its end. Other examples are even more jarring to read. It's tiresome to hear how sensitive and deeply self-aware Aspies are, while they repeatedly fail to recognize consciousness in others. Add a dash of charm and the diagnosis would not be Asberger's. Totally self-absorbed would be more accurate. Yes, the world can be cruel to children who are different, and some remember their wounds for a long time. I'm glad Tim has enjoyed professional success and achieved a measure of peace with himself.
 What this book is not October 26, 2009
J. Dove (Maryland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Parallel Play is a well written memoir but it has a narrow focus. Maybe this is a reflection of the author's Asperger's Syndrome. The author describes his childhood and adolescence in great detail. Then at the end he quickly sums up the rest of his life without any details. The author details some of his obsessive interests as a child such as classical music and silent movies. He mentions his mother and father but he does not give any sense of a relationship with them. Could they really have been completely on the periphery of his existence? He does not relate one single memory of the family together nor does he reveal anything about his brother and sister. Could he really have lived his entire childhood and adolescence in a completely separate world from his family? He does describe wanting to have friends and befriending some elderly neighbors and some of his peers. He also describes using illegal drugs and drinking excessively. At the end of the book he claims to still be a heavy drinker and excuses it because he needs alcohol to cope because of his Asperger's Syndrome and the anxiety it causes. This seems to be the reasoning of an alcoholic justifying his addiction. The author does not give any details of his two marriages. He does not give any information about being a father to three sons. He does not give any information about his reaction to being diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult. The book left me with the impression that the author wrote an excessively detailed account of his childhood interests and teenage loneliness which someone else edited down and then a summary of the rest of his life was tacked on to the end.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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