Tag: England

Becoming Unique by James Charles

December 29, 2015 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

Becoming Unique is a moving and informative account of one man’s journey towards Autism Spectrum Disorder. Whilst delivering practical and constructive advice for those living with autism, Charles also examines the positive attributes of the disorder, which he calls a diffability. Becoming Unique is also a story of faith, as Charles examined his relationship with God and how he made peace with his diagnosis. A rare and valuable first-person narrative about living with autism, James Charles’ story will stay with the reader forever.

James Charles grew up in County Leitrim, Ireland to a family of seven children. In Ireland James received his education and a good awareness of the Catholic faith. James moved to England aged 20, but never considered himself an immigrant due to England being the country of his birth. Despite that, James had difficulty with people understanding his Irish accent and frequently changed jobs within his first year in England. James began to feel more like his old friends still living in Ireland, when he started college part-time in September 1987 and a few months later he worked as a care worker in a hospital caring for adults with learning disabilities and this was to influence much of his career.

After a few years in care work, James quit concentrating on being a full-time student and where he gained a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Public Administration. However James returned to Ireland in 1992 due to limited job opportunities in Luton and being unable to get a further grant to complete his degree. James was a full-time student in 1993 at University College Cork (UCC), where he hoped to gain a Bachelor in Social Science degree with the aim of becoming a Social Worker. While James succeeded in England working on continuous assessments and no exams, James faced the exam nightmare just like when he was a boy, resulting only remaining a year at UCC. Yet James remained living in Cork prior to returning to England in 1995.

James returned to care work, but this time in mental health care settings in London. James would later say “it was not exactly an experience of being thrown in the deep end”, as James had experience of people with mental health problems both when working in learning disabilities but also through people he got to know over the years. After six months James was finished agency work in mental health and returned to one of his old jobs in July 1995. James had no intention of further job moves and remained in his post as a care worker in learning disabilities, till he moved to Stafford to become a student nurse in mental in 1998. It was here James met his future wife, James later said “she was the only stable thing in my life”. While James often had many struggles in more than twenty five years of working, ten of them years were spent working as a mental health nurse. In 2008 James and his wife moved to one of the British islands, where they lived and worked for five years and it was while working here, it was discovered that James had Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

This is a book about a man who was bullied, a victim of discrimination and experienced difficulty on many occasions with his communication. It is also about growing up in Ireland and like many James emigrated to England in the 1980’s, as well as trying to integrate into the socialising environment. As well as struggling with many changes, struggling with faith played a big part throughout his life, but the book also shows that faith is not through one religion. The book looks at the challenges and misunderstandings faced by many Autistic people, even those on the so called high functioning Autistic spectrum. Yet the book also looks at a future for Autism and what Autism can contribute to the world.

Becoming Unique is the voice of someone Autistic rather than the views of a clinical expert. Having an Autistic voice is important, especially where many Autistic individuals often cannot communicate. Becoming Unique also shows that Autistic individuals can have common interest like football and music, as this is shown in the Chapter Glasgow Celtic. The book also shows that more work needs to be done to support Autistic individuals, but also many other individuals struggling with a disability.

Want your own copy? You can pick it up [easyazon_link identifier=”1909477907″ locale=”US” nw=”y” tag=”gimmethatbook-20″]here[/easyazon_link].

Back Behind Enemy Lines by Chris Bridge PLUS GIVEAWAY

April 14, 2015 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 2 Comments

It is 1944 and Anna is parachuted into Normandy as a special agent working with Resistance Groups, spying on the Germans and wiring the information back to the Special Operations Executive, escaping capture and the inevitable torture that would follow.

She falls in love with Pierre, another SOE agent but finds he is not what he purports to be. Then there is the little matter of the Gestapo officer who has guessed her secret. Alone, Anna has to make some terrifying decisions to survive and to ensure the impending invasion remains secret.

It is 2006 in England, where her husband has died and Anna lives alone. Her children are spying on her and plot to put her in a home so that they can sell her house for their own ends. Anna is determined to retain her independence. She falls back on her wartime skills, recruiting Nathan and his girl friend Gemma to help her and becomes close to them as she never was with her own children.

But it is only when she returns to Normandy and confronts the ghosts of her past that she realises how the war had taken its toll on her loveless marriage and her children. She makes the ultimate sacrifice and finally finds the peace and redemption that had evaded her all these years.

Many thanks to Publishing Push for offering this book in exchange for this honest review. At the end of the review there’s a link to enter our contest for a FREE ePub version of this book!!

BACK BEHIND ENEMY LINES is two stories in one. The first part of the book follows Anna as she fights in WWII as a spy: her triumphs, her fears, her growth as a person, and ultimately, her tragedies that shape the rest of her life. The wartime details were gritty and captured the sense of despair and hardship throughout France at that time. The story is completely plausible, and paints Anna as a steady and hard working woman, with perhaps too tight a hold on her emotions. When her situation develops a twist, she has no one to rely upon except herself. I found a good deal of suspense in this part kept me reading, wondering what would happen next.

The second part of the story takes place in 2006; Anna is home and suffering the expected health and mental issues of a 90 year old woman. Her children are hateful, greedy, and loathsome, gathering together to see how quickly they can put her in a home and take her house and money for themselves. Anna, decrepit as she is, digs deep inside herself to regain the mental strength she once possessed and thwart her offspring. Purely by chance she develops a friendship with two teenagers, who help her in her final quest to return to France and put answers to questions that have plagued her all her life.

This part also held suspense for me; I liked elderly Anna much better and felt she was a very sympathetic character. Unfortunately this situation is all too true in today’s world, and people forget that seniors have memories dear to them and were accomplished people in their younger days, they should not be viewed as a burden or problem. It was heartening to see how Anna grew interested in life again, and the reader will feel her getting stronger as the book progresses. Each scene with one of the horrid children is appropriately enraging–there was plenty of times I wanted to smack each one of the ingrates over and over again.

Finally Anna is able to lay down the burden she has been carrying for years as she shares her memories with Nathan and Gemma. Their dialogue is realistic, and the author does a great job of contrasting the elderly Anna and youthful Gemma, by accurate physical descriptions and also by both characters’ internal monologues. The ending is thought provoking, wistful, and triumphant at turns. There could have been many ways the story would come to a close, and Bridge brings everything together in a satisfying and real way. Anna is strong and maintains her sense of self throughout, right up to the ending, which will not be obvious until the book is almost over. I spent some time thinking about Anna and her motivations; the author has created a masterpiece with this fictitious woman who will warm your heart and make you think about how your own life will be when you get old. BACK BEHIND ENEMY LINES is one of the most unique books I’ve read this year so far. I look forward to more by Chris Bridge.

Want your own copy? Click [easyazon_link asin=”B00PQO85RK” locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”gimmethatbook-20″ add_to_cart=”yes” cloaking=”default” localization=”yes” popups=”yes”]here[/easyazon_link].

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Antisense by R.P. Marshall (and book giveaway)

November 14, 2014 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 1 Comment

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Many thanks to the folks at Publishing Push for this book in exchange for an honest review.

It’s very hard to like any of the characters in this book. The narrator, Daniel Hayden, may be unreliable; his motives may be inscrutable. The story starts at the funeral of his father, and we can feel the awkwardness in the air as Daniel describes the scene: I remained by the fireplace, holding onto the mantelpiece where for over an hour I had managed to avoid justifying my existence to a group of people with whom I shared little beyond a small portion of genetic material ( and for most, not even that).

Just a few moments before, a rock is thrown through the window of the room where the gathering is taking place, and the perpetrator runs away, unapprehended. Daniel takes his leave, carrying a small box of his father’s effects, and gets a ride to the train station from his Uncle George, his father’s brother. When he gets home his wife Jane is sitting by herself at home, with a glass of wine and an abundance of sarcasm. We learn that their marriage is not a happy one, and their day to day conversation consists mostly of anger and condescension. I did wonder why they were still together, as it seemed there was nothing really holding them together. The author paints a picture of a bleak childless marriage, in a holding pattern of quiet suspense, and I believe Marshall kept the marriage intact to highlight Daniel’s sense of isolation.

Daniel is a neuroscientist, performing experiments on lab mice to see the activity of different proteins and genes in the amygdala. He is a loner there at work also, and is frustrated by the failure of his current project, which consists of studying aggression in rodents and seeing if certain brain secretions can make them either more or less aggressive. Results seem to be incorrect, and his bosses and grant providers are starting to suspect the worst. A new employee named Erin catches Daniel’s eye, and he is confused by it: The effect she was having on me was difficult to comprehend. The opportunity to learn something new about oneself tends to diminish with age, particularly as one grows accustomed to one’s shortcomings (if not oblivious to them), but she seemed to make so many things possible.

Daniel takes a trip to Chicago to meet with some of the grant providers, and careens through the city in a kind of a fever dream–drinking , bringing a girl back to his hotel room one night, finding himself in a porno shop the next. Things go bad there and he ends up at the police station. The way Marshall describes the scene afterwards is typical of the striking prose encountered throughout the book: A squad car returned me to the hotel sometime after one AM. The night porter ushered me into the glittering, vacant lobby where I stood shell shocked at the brightness and clarity of it all. Hotels have a nightmarish quality at that hour. their empty corridors and hushed elevators sumptuous but sterile like a last meal on death row.

Once Daniel returns back to England he remembers the box he was given at the funeral, and opens it to find a mysterious newspaper clipping. The rest of the book proceeds with him making an effort to discover the meaning of this clipping, which in turn brings him to an unwanted realization about his family, and his recent behavior in America.

I tagged this novel under suspense, but it’s not your typical suspense. It’s quiet, insidious, the kind that creeps up on you, surrounded by vapid images and bland, even dull activities: drinking, small talk, descriptions of the weather. Make no mistake: this book is written brilliantly. Even though you must read 50% of it to even GET to the crux of the matter, it hooks you and makes you wonder where all this is going. The author is a master of the uncommon sentence; his proficiency with language and his ability to turn a phrase makes Antisense one of the best books I’ve read this year. The character of Daniel does not so much develop but is revealed, and he is an unusual protagonist; not evil enough to be hated, too vanilla to be liked. Even the ending is unobtrusive, even peaceful, though somehow mournful.

I look forward to more by RP Marshall. Visit his website to see what his next project is! He was kind enough to provide a print copy for a book giveaway: click HERE to enter. Entries will be accepted from November 14th to November 30th –good luck!

If you are not the lucky winner, click [easyazon_link asin=”B00GCS3WUO” locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”gimmethatbook-20″ add_to_cart=”yes” cloaking=”default” localization=”yes” popups=”yes”]HERE[/easyazon_link] to purchase it.