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Book Reviews
Mozart and the Whale
by Jerry and Mary Newport, with Johnny Dodd
Touchstone, 2007
"Mozart and the Whale" is an autobiographical account of the lives of Jerry and Mary Newport, each of whom has Asperger's Syndrome. Jerry, a whiz with numbers, and Mary, an artistic free spirit, each manifests in different ways the compromised socialization skills characteristic of Asperger's.
The story, ably facilitated by "People" magazine writer Johnny Dodd, alternates between Jerry's and Mary's points of view, roughly following the same timelines (although the parallels in timing are not exact). From this perspective, it's an interesting read - each is able to reflect not only on events in their own life, but also on how the other might have benefited, behaved or reacted. It's also interesting to experience events that both describe, as the inevitable subtle differences in recollection creep in.
This book, however, is most striking in the description of the lives of the two principals. These are "unusual" people - Mary by turns outgoing and artistic, too loud, the life of the party, or withdrawn and introverted. She spends much of her life leading an almost hippie lifestyle, with sex, drugs and aimless wandering aplenty. Brushes with cults, abusive relationships, and post-traumatic stress disorder lead her down a path that ultimately results in her meeting her future husband, Jerry.
Jerry, by contrast, details a litany of childhood and adolescent embarrassments, mostly centered around his fellow schoolboys and an almost-obsessive description of his failures at dating women. Eventually, mired in a series of dead-end jobs, he forms a support group for Autistic adults, which indirectly leads him to meet Mary.
The ensuing romance is no fairy-tale, and both authors are very clear on this point. Difficulties in understanding each others' vulnerabilities lead to the eventual demise of their marriage, even as the popular press and even Hollywood come calling, looking for a "feel-good", quirky story to dramatize. Ultimately, through a somewhat drawn-out final few chapters, the story resolves in more or less the present day, and provides a few good lessons for all in how to manage a marriage.
Why, then, would you want to read this book? Well, it's first and foremost quite an engaging tale, of two people who have led astonishing lives. Some anecdotes are screamingly funny (such as Jerry's attempts to fabricate a killer whale Hallowe'en costume, which is itself practically a recurring character); others are almost unbelievably tragic (Mary, newborn in hand, being abandoned in the middle of nowhere and at times living in a cave, a jealous ex-lover lobbing stones at the entrance). But the real interest in this book is in the links to Asperger's itself, and how the authors collectively reveal aspect after aspect of how they see the world differently than non-Autistic people. These truly are tremendously interesting lives and perspectives. "Mozart and the Whale" is well worth a read, just for the purpose of understanding more about Aperger's and Autism. And for those interested in these conditions from a research or clinical perspective, I would venture that this book is nearly essential reading.
Review by rwintle
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