Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm reading the latest Stephen King novel "End of Watch" - the final book in the Mr Mercedes trilogy. There's a character in it called Holly who's obviously Autistic, but this isn't acknowledged and most people except for the main characters - who all love her obviously - can't understand her behaviour and treat her unkindly. Has anyone else read this book? I can't work out if the author is trying to get the reader to discover that this character is Autistic, and so give them an idea of what it's like to be "different"? Why would an author write an autistic character into a story and then not make it clear that is what they are?
I'm somewhat reminded of a video game (sorry, that tends to be my point of reference for things these days, I seldom have the concentration to read) where a couple of significant characters were subsequently described as somewhat autistic by the game's creator: the game being Bioshock Infinite, for the record, the characters being the Lutece twins and the artistic director (or creator, or whatevs: I always find job titles an imprecise art) being Ken Levine. In a way I'm not surprised that some of the characters are of the ASD persuasion although I was slightly surprised by which ones. But maybe that's just me.