The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mother writes love letter to son with autism
Judith Newman’s twins, Gus and Henry, were born prematurely, after a difficult pregnancy. In the hospital, shortly after giving birth, Newman was visited by a friend, the editor of a parenting magazine. “She told me she knew immediately that Henry was extremely intelligent. She said nothing about Gus.”
When Gus reached 10 months, Newman began to acknowledge that something might be wrong. At age 6, Gus was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum.
Newman’s memoir-in-essays, “To Siri With Love,” takes its name from her popular New York Times article about Gus and his unusual relationship with the Apple guide Siri, but readers expecting only an extended version of that essay will find much more. Newman is a gifted personal essayist, her warmth and wit recalling Nora Ephron’s. The result is a bracingly honest chronicle of life alongside an autistic family member. For the many parents raising children with autism, the book offers both empathy and comic relief. But readers of all backgrounds will find it just as engaging.
There are, particularly in the early chapters, fillips of self-incrimination, which serve a double function in fleshing out the family’s character. But overall, Newman isn’t interested in explaining the ontology of Gus so much as she is interested — compellingly, magically — in Gus himself.
We learn about Gus’s love life, his job prospects, his precise knowledge of the subways, his affinity for cuddles. As a result, the book is less about decontextualized science than it is about intimacy.
Newman is proud that her son is a collector of noises, able to recognize the pitches of individual ambulances sight unseen. But she also knows that his talents, theoretically a point of connection, can isolate him in practice. Gus may have perfect pitch, but he spends his choir time in a corner making train noises. Enter Siri. The voice-recognition software performs a wealth of functions for the autistic community: conversationalist, babysitter and elocution trainer.
“To Siri with Love” is above all a close and wise portrait, Newman’s love letter not to technology but to her son. Newman has mixed feelings about Gus’s dependency on corporate products. But she has nothing but deep, wide love for Gus. “The screens may not be real life,” Newman concludes. “But just maybe they are providing scaffolding to help him create that life.”