Bad Animals: A Father's Accidental Education In Autism

By Joel Yanofsky

Joel Yanofsky tried for years to start this memoir. "It's not just going to be about autism," he told his wife, Cynthia. "It's going to be about parenthood and marriage, about hope and despair, and storytelling, too." "Marriage?" Cynthia said. "What about marriage?" A veteran book reviewer, Yanofsky has spent a lifetime immersed in literature (not to mention old movies and old jokes), which he calls shtick. This account of a year in the life of a family describes a father's struggle to enter his son's world, the world of autism, using the materials he knows best: self-help books, feel-good memoirs, literary classics from the Bible to Dr. Seuss, old movies, and, yes, shtick. Funny, wrenching, and unfailingly candid, Bad Animals is both an exploration of a baffling condition and a quirky love story told by a gifted writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9780143180470

Joel Yanofsky

Joel Yanofsky has worked as a literary journalist, book reviewer and freelance writer since 1983. He has interviewed and profiled dozens of authors, from Margaret Atwood to John Updike. He has been a columnist for The Montreal Gazette, and his humour columns have appeared in MTL magazine, MENZ, Books in Canada and The Gazette. He's also written for The Village Voice, Chatelaine, Reader's Digest, TV Guide, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star. He has been nominated for two Quebec Magazine awards. His autobiographical novel Jacob's Ladder was published in 1997, his memoir Mordecai and Me in 2003, and his memoir Bad Animals in 2011.