Boy Alone: A Brother's Memoir

Karl Taro Greenfeld knew from an early age that his little brother, Noah, was not like other children. He couldn't crawl, and he had trouble making eye contact or interacting with his family. As Noah grew older, his differences became even more pronounced—he was unable to communicate verbally, use the toilet, or tie his shoes, and despite his angelic demeanor, he often had violent outbursts.

No doctor, social worker, or specialist could pinpoint what was wrong with Noah beyond a general diagnosis: autism. The boys' parents, Josh and Foumi, dedicated their lives to caring for their younger son with myriad approaches—a challenging, often painful experience that the devoted father detailed in a bestselling trilogy of books.

Now, for the first time, acclaimed journalist Karl Taro Greenfeld speaks out about growing up in the shadow of his autistic brother, revealing the complex mix of rage, confusion, and love that defined his childhood. Boy Aloneis his brutally honest memoir of the hopes, dreams, and realities of life with a mentally disabled sibling.

Seamlessly weaving together the social history of autism and autism research—as the Greenfelds lived through it in seeking treatment for Noah—with the deeply affecting story of two very different boys growing up side by side, this book raises crucial philosophical questions: Can relationships exist without language? How should aging parents care for a nonverbal, violent child, and then a grown man who is not self-sufficient? Is there anything that can be done to help an extremely autistic child or adult become a member of mainstream society?

Haunting, tragic, and unforgettable, this chronicle of autism is a beautiful, wholly original exploration of what it means to be a family, a brother, and a person.

"Sibling rivalry — and love — of a ravaging kind is the subject of this unsparing memoir of the author's life with his severely autistic brother. Journalist Greenfeld (Standard Deviations) describes his brother, Noah, as a 'spitting, jibbering, finger-twiddling, head-bobbing idiot'; unable to speak or clean himself and given to violent tantrums, Noah and his utter indifference to others makes him permanently 'alone.' But Karl feels almost as alienated; with his parents preoccupied with Noah's needs (and Noah's celebrity after his father, Joshua, wrote a bestselling account of his illness in A Child Called Noah), he turns to drugs and petty crime in the teenage wasteland of suburban Los Angeles. Greenfeld doesn't flinch in his depiction of Noah's raging dysfunctions or his critique of a callous mental health-care system and arrogant autism-research establishment. (He's especially hard on the psychoanalytic theories of the 'Viennese charlatan' Bruno Bettelheim.) But the author's self-portrait is equally lacerating; he often wallows in self-pity — 'I return home stoned, drunk, puking on myself as I sit defecating into the toilet, crying to my parents... that I am a failure' — and owns up to the coldness that Noah's condition can provoke in him. The result is a bleak but affecting chronicle of a family simultaneously shattered and bound tight by autism." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Greenfeld recounts his childhood with an autistic brother, in this brutally honest chronicle of the hopes, dreams, and realities of life with a mentally disabled sibling.

Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of three books—Speed Tribes, Standard Deviations, and China Syndrome. A longtime writer and editor for Timeand Sports Illustrated, he is currently a correspondent for CondÉ Nast Portfolio. His nonfiction has been anthologized in various Best Americancollections, and his fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, and Best American Short Stories 2009. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.