Born on a Blue Day (Christy Mann)

Born on a Blue Day
Daniel Tammet
Free Press
226 Pages

Amazon recommended it, based on my previous book ordering history.

Born on a Blue Day is a memoir. Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome, and synaethesia. Synaethesia means that he associates numbers, days, and thing, with colors, and he can better remember them that way. This is also where the title comes from - "I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number nine or the sound of loud voices arguing." The book basically follows his life from early childhood up through adulthood. He talks about how he had trouble making friends, how when he get upset he closes his eyes and counts, how he likes prime numbers, his synaethesia and what he “sees” and envisions things to “feel” like. (Prime numbers, for example, are ‘smooth like pebbles’.) Of all the books about savants, this is generally considered to be one of the best, because Tammet actually wrote the book himself, without a ‘ghost writer’.

The audience for this book is anyone who is interested in the way people with savant autism go through daily life, because since it’s told in first person, it’s a good look into an example of what goes on in their minds.

The style Tammet writes in is concise, and to the point. This is largely due to the way people with Aspergers perceive the world around them. Everything is written as “and then this, and then this happened, and then that, but he tells things just as they happened, and without much emotion, but somehow still managing to tell you exactly how he felt.
“My parents sometimes fought, as I think most parents do, over their children and the best way to deal with different situations. When they argued, their voices turned a dark blue color in my mind and I would crouch on the floor and press my forehead into the carpet with my hands over my ears until the noise abated.” (35)

“Listening to other people is not easy for me. When someone is speaking to me it often feels like I’m trying to tune in to a particular radio station and a lot of what is said just passes in and out of my head like static.” (75)
This struck me because it’s a really good example of Tammet specifically registers things. It’s intriguing to me that he can do things such as learn a new language and become fluent at it within a week, but he has difficulty interacting in society.

“When I look at a sequence of numbers, my head begins to fill with colors, shapes and textures that knit together spontaneously to form a visual landscape. These are always very beautiful to me; as a child I often spent hours at a time exploring numerical landscapes in my mind. To recall each digit, I simply retrace the different shapes and textures in my head and read the numbers out of them.” (177)
I really like this explanation of how he explains synaethesia, because it makes it a little easier to understand. It’s a little odd to me how numbers can have textures, though I almost understand the color association making sense.

“I felt very anxious about the possibility of leaving my family and traveling hundreds of miles away to a new life in a new country. But I was an adult now and knew that I had to do something if I was ever going to be able to make my on way in the world outside my room at home.” (115)
It’s almost sad how he feels like since he’s an adult he ‘has to’ do ‘adult things’ now. Though he ends up learning a lot from traveling to another country and it helps him make lasting friendships, I felt bad that he got so ridiculously anxious about the trip.

While I could put myself in his place and understand what he was feeling, I couldn’t personally relate to any of the book, which is most likely due to the fact that I’m not a homosexual man with savant autism and synaethesia. However, I could relate some parts to when I used to volunteer with handicapped people of all ages on horseback. Although they weren’t all specifically autistic, lots were, and if I had read this book then, I feel like I would have had a much better insight to these kids and adults and their thought processes and behaviors. I did really like this book because I usually like memoirs, and I’m interested in books about autism. It reminded me a little of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, which is a fictional story about 15-year-old Christopher Boone. It doesn’t actually say it in the novel, but from knowing and reading about it a lot, it’s clear that he also has Aspergers. The book is never boring, and it explains a lot in a descriptive but not unnecessarily detailed way.