Analysis
The opening pages introduce Anna: a six-year-old girl who rocks back and forth in a chair with maddening repetition, her blue eyes wide open to the world yet taking nothing in. Pretty as she is, she can transform in an instant into an angry, shrieking, spitting creature.
We also meet her parents—an ordinary young couple at the moment they absorb the cold shock of a diagnosis without hope. "It's very unlikely your daughter will ever recognize you," the doctor says.
Then the parents and their daughter leave the doctor's office. Anyone who reads this book will follow them and will not be able to let them go until the final page. It is the story of a desperate struggle the entire family wages to pull Anna from autism—a mysterious illness, barely understood, that severs a child's connection to the world around her so completely that all contact seems lost.
The struggle ends in unexpected, miraculous success. At twenty, Anna is a cheerful, intelligent young woman, indistinguishable from her peers.
Beyond the love, hope, sensitivity, and care her parents lavish on her, it is the father's constant, methodical observation—a man without formal education, without professional training—that becomes the key. Through patient, devoted watching, he finds a way to crack open the fractured world of his daughter's mind and gradually guide her toward a healthy relationship with reality.
Evaluation
Is this a good book? Worth reading?
Absolutely yes—and not only because it is a gripping, compelling story, not only because it offers courage and hope to those living with the reality of children who are different. What makes it powerful as well is its simplicity. The writing describes clearly the methods used in Anna's difficult upbringing and underscores how changes in a child's environment can reshape behavior.
The boundless love of Anna's parents—love that knows how to become courage and wisdom—should teach us to transform the immature, sentimental goodwill so common in society into decisive action and genuine professional commitment.
This is indeed a beautiful book, one that inspires and heartens. Yet I think it's fair to add a few other thoughts.
There are mothers and fathers equally full of love who have not achieved the same results. For them, this book could become a burden—a whisper of guilt, a sense of having failed, as if their love were not enough. But we know that autism affects each child differently, with varying severity. Moreover, while the book seems to suggest that Anna's acceptance by all around her comes because she has recovered, because she is clever and likable, we must insist on something else: that making room for those who seem only to be angry, shrieking, spitting creatures—that acceptance is not merely an act of solidarity and love. It is also a sign of psychological and human maturity.