Poor Farm

Description

Ronan O'Driscoll's novel follows two people on the autism spectrum--one the child of the narrator, and the other a boy confined to a Poor Farm in Nova Scotia in the 19th century. The tale explores the attitudes and assumptions that contorted and contort the way we deal with neurodivergent people, and take us into the Dickensian grimness of Victorian-era poor houses and official policies for "dealing with" the poor and the weak.