Funny and moving in equal measure, Jem Lester’s Shtum and Keith Stuart’s A Boy Made of Blocks reflect the authors’ personal experiences with their autistic sons. In Shtum, Jonah – blissful in his innocence – becomes the prism through which all the complicated strands of personal identity, family history and misunderstanding are finally untangled. To eight-year-old Sam in A Boy Made of Blocks the world is a puzzle he can’t solve on his own, but when he plays Minecraft it opens up a place where he and his father begin to rediscover both themselves and each other. In conversation with Adam Feinstein, also the father of an autistic son.
