Fern Brady

Strong Female Character is a raw, no-holds-barred memoir by Scottish comedian Fern Brady about growing up with undiagnosed autism. Not just undiagnosed but misdiagnosed and incorrectly medicated, which made Brady's time at secondary school and university ones of real turmoil, and put immense strain on her relationships with her family and her various partners.

Brady makes some good points, and I'm sure there will be many people with similar backgrounds who find that this book resonates with them. But I finished Strong Female Character feeling highly ambivalent about it, for a variety of reasons. All I will say is that as a memoir this feels premature, or at least that in a few years Brady may find herself writing a follow-up volume that displays the benefits of some more hindsight—while she is a feminist, she has clearly internalised a lot of fatphobia, classism, misogyny, etc, that she hasn't even begun to grapple with.… (plus d'informations)