When the Scottish comedian Fern Brady phoned her father to say she had been diagnosed with autism, he was on his daily commute back from London. He said, “Oh right”, and began complaining about the traffic. Brady replied: “Well, they say autism can be inherited from one parent, so I guess that’s answered the question of which one.”
Strong Female Character, written and narrated by Brady, and winner of the inaugural Nero award for nonfiction, documents the turmoil of growing up with undiagnosed autism, during which she excelled academically but struggled with sensory overload and had violent outbursts that baffled her family, teachers and peers. After she began self-harming, her parents sent her to an adolescent psychiatric unit where she was a day patient. She was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, though she knew that wasn’t the whole story. It took until she was 34 to get an autism diagnosis.
