Maybe I'm Amazed
A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs
- Author: Harris, John
As touching as it is informative, bringing together autism champions like Loma Wing and Simon Baron-Cohen with Macca and Mott the Hoople. It feels like an essential read for any music lovers...
Maybe I'm Amazed
A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs
- Author: Harris, John
Purchase product
Other available formats
As touching as it is informative, bringing together autism champions like Loma Wing and Simon Baron-Cohen with Macca and Mott the Hoople. It feels like an essential read for any music lovers...
About
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
'BRILLIANT' ADRIAN CHILES'THIS BOOK CONTAINS MAGIC' CAITLIN MORAN'ENTRANCING, HEARTBREAKING, UPLIFTING' MARINA HYDEIn this extraordinary memoir, a father tells the story of how music has opened up the world to his son, one song at a time.Obsessed with music since he was a child, John Harris had no idea that he was in fact preparing himself for the greatest challenge of his life. But so it transpired. When his son James was born, and three years later diagnosed with autism, music became a source of precious connection and endless wonder for both of them.Maybe I'm Amazed describes how the music of The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, The Velvet Underground, Amy Winehouse and many more were soon woven into the fabric of James's life, becoming an essential part of who he is. It takes us through the struggles of raising an autistic child in a prejudiced world, and uncovers a hidden history of neurodivergence and creativity that casts new light on why notes, chords and lyrics speak so powerfully to the human mind. Anyone who has fallen in love with a band or heard their life reflected back to them by a song will recognise themselves in the story of this father and his son. And in considering the intense and transcendent way James absorbs and connects with music, it has lessons in listening and living for us all.Contents
- Maybe I'm Amazed - A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs
Awards and reviews
As touching as it is informative, bringing together autism champions like Loma Wing and Simon Baron-Cohen with Macca and Mott the Hoople. It feels like an essential read for any music lovers with neurodiversity in the family, and for those who are neurotypical, too. -- Jeremy Allen
Harris writes about music with wit, clarity and a welcome lack of pretension . . . through his and James's shared love of music, his initial doomy grief gives way to a constellation of admiration, fear, humour, awe and, of course, love. I wept several times, and the book wouldn't have that power without the author's willingness to be real and vulnerable. As he observes, autistic traits appear throughout humankind. You might say we're like everyone else - only more so
Tender . . . full of wit and wisdom. His early chapters read like a cathartic outpouring about the hurdles and obstacles his family has had to face, but his forays into neuroscience get deeper by the page, which is where this book's real power lies. Brave [and] arresting. his book also underlines for us how music, in so many magical ways, can powerfully bring very different people together
Touching and candid . . . This moving portrait of normal people dealing with an unfathomable situation captures the uncertainty, guilt and flashes of joy that having an autistic child brings [and] the freedoms and revelations that come through music
