Books: Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

Publicity around this book includes a piece in the Guardian¹ informing us that Chris Packham (TV presenter, photographer, and conservationist) was diagnosed in his early 20s with Asperger’s syndrome. As a memoir this is not essential information for the book because it stands alone as a magnificent boy’s own story demanding the reader consider what may have drove him to seek suicide as an escape from his difficult life. As a practitioner I read certain literature in order to better understand what it might be like to live daily with an autistic spectrum disorder. Chris does an excellent job providing us with a snapshot of his struggles and difficulties in not understanding the social world that we all live in.

Chris recounts episodes in his early life as short, brilliant vignettes. Back and forth we learn about his ‘Empire of Beauty’, ‘The Neighbours’, and ‘The Naturalist’. With parental support and encouragement he just about survives the bullying, torment, and ridicule received from his peers for being ‘weird’. However, physically and mentally beaten he learns to ‘shut down’ to the point of trying to disappear and become ‘extinct’, thus making survival tenuous.

This is not a misery memoir full of self-pity: his descriptions and adventures into the world of nature soar as high as his love for his kestrel. His emotional pain is tangible, he is unable to cope, and so he begins to ‘separate’ from a world he perceives as confusing, unintelligible, and untrustworthy: ‘Humans can’t be trusted with expectations. Or completely trusted full stop. Animals can.’

When his kestrel becomes ill and dies, the world loses meaning and the loss without perspective is magnified: ‘I didn’t fit in so I didn’t mix in.’

To make sense of this there are chapters that appear to be sessions with his therapist. In what must have taken years, Chris eloquently describes how he has learned how to self-manage and address his anxiety, and although he hasn’t got over the ‘classroom cannibals’ he is now in a long-term relationship with someone he thanks for the ‘management of my personality traits’.

This illuminating book contains a great deal of insight into Asperger’s syndrome and is definitely worth reading.

• © British Journal of General Practice 2017