A comedian's guide to autism, reviewed by Fiona Barry

I stay away from books about medicine and neuroscience. If you are like me and easily influenced, you will self-diagnose with whatever condition you are currently reading about. I first realised I had smallpox from the back cover of a book on Egyptian mummies, and my clicking left ankle is definitely lupus and not, as the NHS 111 website sighs and tires of telling me, the normal popping of gas bubbles around the joints. 

But Pierre Novellie’s debut book Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things?: A Comedian's Guide To Autism encourages readers to ponder a diagnosis for themselves and suggests that ‘far, far more people meet the threshold for autism than we would ever have imagined’.

Novellie arrived at his diagnosis of autism at the age of 30, following a heckle from an audience member who also had the condition (or disability, or set of symptoms so variable that it can’t really be clustered under a single term). Signs that are more common in autistic people, the book states, can be as wide-ranging as: hypermobile joints, alexithymia (difficulty recognizing one’s own feelings), balance problems when ‘the head is not upright or the feet are off the ground’, and even revulsion at certain combinations of colours.

Despite the title, I expected a standard comedy memoir, loosely structured around the hook of an autism diagnosis, but covering the usual autobiography beats: my first gig, my worst gig, and my terrible petrol station diet. Instead, this is a surprisingly vulnerable account of the pain that undiagnosed autism caused the author – or, as he argues, that an unsympathetic society caused – followed by a plea for the changes and empathy that would have helped him as a younger man.

As an outsider (Novellie grew up in South Africa, before moving to Britain), the comedian observes that the UK can be both peculiarly warm and hostile to autism: perhaps the British love of eccentrics make us more tolerant of odd behaviour. But conversely, he finds classic British politeness – or, as Novellie puts it, ‘incredibly weak phrasing people are expected to use in the United Kingdom in order to water down their own opinions and ideas and make them more palatable’ bewildering and infuriating. 

Similarly, the book is persuasive when it gives a comedian’s take on how strange ‘neurotypical’ people’s behaviour can be. Compared to Novellie’s diet, ‘their desire for endless food novelty can seem bizarrely decadent,’ and he explains that he doesn’t need to hear repeated, reassuring ‘I love you’s from his partner: ‘When she gives me a lovely and intense goodbye when I go off to a gig it makes me feel like I’m heading to the Somme and unlikely to make it home.’

This is a very personal account. Novellie touches on, but doesn’t deeply explore, the scientific and social controversies related to autism and its diagnosis. He raises the timely and political question of whether autism of all shades and profundities should be grouped under the same term, with massive understatement: ‘It strikes me as unreasonable that I have the same label as someone who needs round-the-clock care and supervision.’ He worries that mingling everyone under the same word could lead to underestimating the level of support that, for instance, non-verbal people need, and ultimately to the catastrophic withdrawal of government funding.

Despite some shocking facts – the book cites figures that 85 per cent of young people in custody are on the autistic spectrum despite only being less than 5 per cent of of the population – there are also some great lines. Looking back at his childhood, Novellie realises that his scrupulous formality as a child made him come across as a ‘spooky little freak’ and ‘a frightening little butler’, especially when he reacted to the birth of his sister by telling a friend ‘she disturbs my mind’.

I would have been fascinated to hear more about how he feels his autism has influenced his comedy routines. For anyone interested in neurospicy brains, Novellie is a charming guide.

• Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things?: A Comedian's Guide to Autism by Pierre Novellie is published by Bonnier Books priced £16.99. It is available from Amazon priced £13.09– or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.

Published: 2 Sep 2024