The Langage Of Others. a novel by Clare Morrall

what a great book!

just the kind i like. it has depth, but not too much. i love books like these which lets me see from someone else's view. in this case, the view of brilliant pianist, Jessica Fontaine, who teeters on the edge between her private world and the real world.

the parts of the book which i love were the times she was alone as a child and her thoughts. the book paints a quiet, peaceful, hidden world that only she lived in when she was a young girl. it's so quaint! i love the impression i get of her childhood home.

Audland Halls, it was called.

big, empty, old and breaking apart. doesn't sound like the ideal place for most people to want to call it their home. but Jessica loved it all the same.

and so do i.

the emptiness was comforting. the age of the house felt familiar. there is warmth, left behind from the rich history Audland Halls held. this is all from imagination, of course. but nevertheless, i still think that it'd be lovely if i had also grown up in a place like Audlands, which was supposedly a country house once. it had a tennis court and a lake.

ahh..

"i thrive on the emptiness of my house" was what Jessica thought. what a funny way to think, i think. isn't it?

"I'm seeing something new, my own life transformed by the removal of a filter, a different Jessica, someone I have never seen before.
It's me, I realise with sudden clarity. It wasn't Andrew who passed it on, it was me. I'm the one with the condition, the infinite space that separates me from the rest of the world.
I've spent all these years groping my way along in a bewildered silence, almost blind to everything except my own limited perceptions. I've been travelling without a compass or even a friendly hand at me elbow to guide me. I've lost my way, wandered in circles, never understood how you can use the stars to navigate.
And now, finally, after all this time, the dense fog is clearing, drifting away and I can see where I am. I'm on a narrow pathway that leads out of the strange land. I'm about to cross the border, show my passport and step into the real world, blinking at it's brightness.
A seven-year-old Jessica skates past me, her plaits swaying from side to side, her whole body absorbed by the rhythm. No wonder Harriet started to look elsewhere for friends, no wonder their mother gave up trying to communicate with her. That other Jessica was unreachable.
Music must have helped me to wake up. Something indefinable that dripped down inside, an imperceptible erosion over decades. a slow cresendo, poco a poco. Little by little. And then the shock of Andrew, not gradual but sforzando, suddenly loud, explosive, blasting his way in without subtlety. How could I resist him when I had no defences, no ability to assess other people?
I don't need to feel guilty anymore. The disability wasn't his, it was mine. He could have helped me, eased me more gently into the real world, but he didn't.
But maybe he did, by giving me Joel. The other defining experience of my life. the revelation that I could love a child, the discovery that everything was in place but hidden, waiting for the signal to emerge."

you see, Jessica has Asperger's Syndrome.