I read this between Christmas and New Year, and needless to say it resonated with me. If you’ve ever seen Robin Ince perform, you’ll know he’s quite a manic comedian, often preferring to riff rather than stick to his script (my encounter here). Radio 4 listeners will be familiar with him as Brian Cox’s ‘enthusiastic idiot’ sidekick in The Infinite Monkey Cage, from which Ince has recently been dropped due to not being in tune with everything the Beeb says/does. This is shocking, for he has been brilliant in that role over many years and TIMC (along with Curious Cases with Hannah Fry, and What’s up Docs with the van Tulleken twin doctors) are the best science programmes around to listen to.
Ince was spurred on to write this book after having received an ADHD diagnosis at the age of 52, after suffering a period of depression, lack of concentration, self-doubt and anxiety. In light of that things started to make sense, including repressed trauma from a car crash experienced in his childhood, and he set out to find himself again, to examine what ‘normal’ is, and to talk to many in the world of neurodivergence.
He’s not a clinician, so he steers clear of talking about diagnoses and medication where possible, talking to those with ASD, OCD or ADHD just to throw about a few initials from this wide world. They talk about themselves and how their neurodivergence affects their lives, and what works and doesn’t work for them. We laugh and cry along with Robin and his interviewees, and yes, I recognised many traits in myself that were described throughout.
This was an enjoyable and educative read and Ince succeeds in his premise of examining the world of normal in all of its facets and in doing so makes us all feel that it’s OK to be different. I’d thoroughly recommend it. I shall leave you with a selection of favourite quotes.
Normal is relative. Perhaps, rather than thinking of people being ‘abnormal’ or ‘weird’, we should just acknowledge that their way of being is rarer.
Henry David Thoreau famously wrote that most of us live ‘lives of quiet desperation’, and for some, there may be very tangible reasons for this; but for others, this life ‘of quiet desperation’ and the costs that come with it – the cost of concealing ourselves – is something I believe to be almost entirely unnecessary.
It is not the right of others to declare whether your trauma is enough to be traumatic or not, just as we cannot state definitively how much pain someone is in after they have trodden on a tack.
Many have Doom boxes too. Doom does not mean doom. Doom actually stands for ‘Didn’t Organize Only Moved’. It’s a solution for all those times you’ve been asked, ‘Are you really sure you want to keep that thing and not just take it down to the rubbish tip?’ And you’ve fought tooth and nail to keep it. You might not look at it or need it for months, but until you do, you know where it is.
Source: Own copy. Macmillan hardback, 2025, 288 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link (free UK+ P&P)
