Auf wilden Pfaden: Wie ich aufbrach und endlich zu mir selbst fand

by Katherine May, Meike Rötzer (Narrator)

Im August 2015 macht Katherine May sich auf, um den 1014 Kilometer langen South West Coast Path entlang der Küsten von Somerset, Devon und Cornwall nach Dorset zu wandern. Sie will den Kopf freibekommen, endlich verstehen, warum ihr so vieles in ihrem Leben schwerer zu fallen scheint als Warum hat sie immer wieder das Gefühl, nicht recht zu verstehen, was andere meinen, wenn sie mit ihr sprechen? Warum verspürt sie so oft den Impuls, aus einer Gruppe Menschen in die Einsamkeit zu flüchten? Und warum empfindet sie es als besonders herausfordernd, Mutter zu sein? Je öfter sie einen Fuß vor den anderen setzt, bei Wind und Wetter an der Küste entlang, desto klarer wird ihr, woher ihr »Anderssein« rührt – und dass die Wanderung auch eine Wanderung zu ihr selbst ist.





Die Bestsellerautorin Katherine May findet auf einer einjährigen Wanderung inmitten betörend wilder Küstenlandschaften zur Sie ist Autistin. Das erschüttert sie bis ins Mark, eröffnet ihr jedoch die Chance, endlich das Leben zu leben, das ihr entspricht. Berührend, aufwühlend und klug schreibt sie über eine Diagnose in der Lebensmitte, die ihre Welt auf den Kopf stellt. Ungekürzt gelesen von Meike Rötzer.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Psychology, Mental Health, Biography, Audiobook

Audible Audio

First published April 19, 2018

About the author

Katherine May is an internationally bestselling author and podcaster living in Whitstable, UK. Her hybrid memoir Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times became a New York Times, Sunday Times and Der Spiegel bestseller, was adapted as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and was shortlisted for the Porchlight and Barnes and Noble Book of the Year. The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of a midlife autism diagnosis, is currently being adapted as an audio drama by Audible. Other titles include novels such as The Whitstable High Tide Swimming Club, and The Best, Most Awful Job, an anthology of essays about motherhood which she edited. Her journalism and essays have appeared in a range of publications including The New York Times, The Observer and Aeon.

Katherine’s podcast, The Wintering Sessions, ranks in the top 1% worldwide, and she has been a guest presenter for On Being’s The Future of Hope series. Her next book, Enchantment, will be published in 2023.

Katherine lives with her husband, son, two cats and a dog. She loves walking, sea-swimming and pickling slightly unappealing things.

Reviews

[Wish Vintage Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

April is the anniversary of my own Autism diagnosis, it has been a whole year since my suspicions were confirmed, and the journey towards my own understanding and acceptance continues.  Since I self diagnosed a little over 20 months ago, out of the blue, I have sought out books that help me to better understand myself.  Many of them have made me sob with recognition and realisation of how I have struggled.  Notes are made in the margins of many of them where I pencil in incidents that are brought to mind from my own back-catalogue.  I have gifted particular favourites to family members explaining that finally we have a manual on how to deal with Rebecca.  But this year I have found these books difficult to deal with, mentally draining and upsetting during periods when I am probably in a bit of denial to be honest.  Much as I sought out the diagnosis to confirm my own suspicions, much as I was relieved to hear confirmation of what I knew already, I have still spent about 12 months doubting that it is true, though frequently being proven wrong!  It is exhausting to read a book that you are so familiar with already, that makes you realise that you are different, that these are actual issues that are not going away and that, perhaps, some people have got a better handle on it.

This book was different.

This book was sunshine and nature, hawks and the crashing waves, peanut m&m's and putting one foot in front of the other.  This book felt like home for many reasons.  It was spooky how similar some of Katherine's experiences of working this out were to my own.  How strangely identical some of her thought processes seem to be.   How difficult noise and light and people can be to deal with but how your husband already knows that about you and you don't.

But this book is so much more than a journey towards an ASD diagnosis and that's what made it different.  The walk that Katherine undertook to complete before her 40th birthday, the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path, along the coast around Devon and Cornwall, interspersed with walks around Kent, my own home County, breathed a freshness into this and at times the autism was secondary and the walk was everything.  The grit and determination was inspiring.  The glimpses of Katherine's autism were achingly obvious to me, knowing what I know about myself, but were ultimately just part of a story about one woman's walk.

There were so many moments in this book, so many times, when I felt that I was reading about myself.  The confusion about why people don't like you when you're the one putting the most effort into friendships.  The friendships that drift away.  The anger.  The need for silence.  The struggle to fit in, to be present.  The feedback about always disappearing.  The hyper focus when you put your mind to something.  The sudden self-awareness that the realisation of autism brings making you so self-conscious about how you are that you just want to go far away and never talk to anyone again.

This is the first autism memoir that I have read where I genuinely feel able to recommend it to everyone because there's so much more to it.  The autism is important and educating people about what it really is, rather than what they think it is, is something that we hope for but often these memoirs are really only accessible for other Autistic people.  To help them understand themselves.  This book will make you want to lace up your walking boots more than anything and into the bargain you will definitely learn what being an autistic woman is really like.  And to hear that we are positive about it!

"The truth is that the label of ASD helps me to make a better account of myself, and to finally find a mirror in which I can recognise my own face.  I'm proud of it, actually.  It has given me many gifts".  

Katherine's writing is a delight and this is the loveliest most positive book I have read in ages.  I like to walk and Katherine has given me the confidence to put a bit more effort into it.  I want to go see what she saw!  I am more positive about my own diagnosis through reading this book and have to say that I look forward to reading it again.  It'd be great, Katherine, if you went on another walk and wrote about it!  Post diagnosis or never mentioning it.  Because really this is just as at home with travel books to be honest and I would love to read more!  Feel free to continue inspiring me!

I read about so many authors that feel so vulnerable putting their novels out there.  How much more difficult must it be to put your own self out there.  I thank you so much Katherine for this book.  It is one I shall keep on my bookshelves, read again and gift to relatives and friends, just for reading pleasure, walking pleasure and a smattering of ASD.

•Katherine uses both terms Aspergers and Autism in her book.  This is because the term Aspergers is no longer used in the main and most diagnosis now are for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The Electricity of Every Living Thing’ has a very similar theme to Odd Girl Out: An Autistic Woman in a Neurotypical World: a married woman with a child coming to terms with an autism diagnosis in her late thirties. In this case, the narrative is structured around walking the South West Coast path. May is an involving writer, vividly evoking her experiences of being overwhelmed in crowds and struggling with motherhood. She describes the coastline beautifully as she walks it, reminding me of the joyful feeling of freedom from walking alone. The grimness of heavy rain is also very convincing, as this is Britain after all. May adroitly invites the reader into her head and conveys an experience of autism not dissimilar to that in Odd Girl Out: An Autistic Woman in a Neurotypical World. However this book concentrates more on the theme of parenting, which I found pretty involving despite motherhood not being a topic of great interest to me. May explains the particular difficulties of having an aversion to touch and other sensory sensitivities with a small child. Moreover, her experiences of transcendental meditation are fascinating. The book begins with her realisation that she’s autistic, then proceeds through her contemplation and re-interpretation of her life in light of this. It's a sensitively written and compelling memoir, which focuses on individual experience rather than contextualising autism to any great extent. For me, the most memorable parts showed rural Kent and the South West coast through May’s eyes and ears, as she walked on winding paths through places that could still be called wild.

EDIT I initially forgot to quote this excellent point on the historically contingent aspect of what is considered a disability or disorder:

I would not have been so strange in a previous era. In a quieter world, a less hurried one, without the whine of mobile phones and the ceaseless electronic drone of voices from the radio and the TV; without the noisy surges of hand driers and the bleeping of train doors; without the flat plastic unknowable surfaces and the dry-air containment of office life; without pulsing lights and the ceaseless sense of personal availability.
Without all these things, I might have been different. [...] As a woman, of course, there are few points in history when I would have felt the advantages of this greater personal freedom, and so I must content myself with the noisy, demanding present day and be grateful for it.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) It’s unfortunate for May that this memoir about walking the South West Coast Path came out in the same year as Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path* (and that the cover and title are so awful – unrepresentative and not suggestive of the contents, respectively), because both are well worth reading. If one was being reductive, the gimmick here is that May is adjusting to an Asperger’s diagnosis; in the Winn it’s that she’s homeless.

In August 2015 May sets out to walk the SWCP in the year before she turns 40, devoting most weekends to the task, but ends up doing just parts of it, mostly in her beloved Devon, along with some of the North Downs Way in her native Kent. The journey, proverbially, becomes more important than the destination, especially because along the way it turns into more of an inward process of accepting who she’s been all along: a ‘difficult’ person who has struggled with the physicality and intimacy of relationships and parenting, and frequently has to check in on her mental health. She realizes that she’s been “passing” as normal for years, having built up the social skills to appear neurotypical. There’s a relief in discovering a reason why, as she puts it, “I am intense and I am Marmitey.”

I admired May’s self-knowledge and determination, but tended to enjoy her memories and the exploration of autism more than the actual nitty-gritty details about walking the path (the sessions inevitably end with her retreating to a pub and waiting for her longsuffering husband, H, to pick her up in the car with their young son Bert). However, I did like her wry frustration at the path’s crazy ups and downs – “There are moments when it feels as though it was designed with mountain goats in mind, rather than humans.”

*It was published less than one month after Winn’s book!

Some favorite lines:

“Isn’t that why I walk, anyway: because it gives me permission to go a little bit wild at the edges, and to escape into my own thoughts?”

“I have a running, secret theory that, ever since I’ve started this walk, some malevolent power or other has arranged for the wettest winter on record, and for the especially cold, damp patches to coincide with the brief moments I get to walk.”

“Shouldn’t we all ask ourselves to do impossible things, just once in a while?”

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

About forty pages in I thought do I really want to stick with this woman who is so uncomfortable in her own skin, so stressed and distressed? And then I realized I am the problem. People like me, who do not have social anxiety or difficulty reading social cues, see her as the problem. That it’s her burden to get with the program and figure us out and fit in. When we could make it so much easier for her if we tried to get her, and understand and accommodate. To get that noises and smells and crowds we tune out can feel like physical attacks. We think they know when they’re being rude or odd or difficult and could stop but choose not to. We don’t get that they aren’t the ones who don’t get it. We are.
We could. If we tried. My favorite part is page 98 where she says she doesn’t want to be cured. Because then she wouldn’t be herself anymore. And she’s right. She’s not the one who needs to change.
Glad she has H and Bertie and friends and family. Glad I stuck with it and glad she wrote it and look forward to reading more from her.

[A.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because I love the cover and title, and was fascinated to read more about the author's late self discovery of autism. The opening chapter hit exactly the note I was looking for, and I settled in for the ride.

There were moments of real emotion, fascinating insights of her coping mechanisms, of how she views the world.

But... despite the subtitle I hadn't quite realised how much "walking" this book would cover. In fact it felt much more like a travelogue than a memoir, and I found myself frustrated by the endless scenes of plodding through the countryside, and by the end I was skim reading large chunks.

I get it: the physical journey she took also guided her journey of self discovery. But I was far more interested in her mental journey, and came away disappointed, like I'd wandered lost through a forest and come out exactly where I started.

That said, this is well written, with fascinating glimmers of an alternative world view - it just wasn't for me.

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. I loved her first book Wintering. This book took more time for me to warm up to. Her walking journal along the South West coastal Path in England. was my favorite part being that I love walking journals. And now of course, I am plotting to walk this path or part of it. Devon or Cornwall??

[Greta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every night, beach-worn, Bert curls up in bed next to me, and I often wake to find two bright eyes on me, just savouring the glee of being close. He strokes my face and whispers, 'I love you, Mummy.' and then wriggles his little body nearer, insinuating himself under my chin. And I realise, quite unexpectedly, that Bert is the only person in my life whose electricity exactly matches my own, whose touch is as native to my skin as air or water. There was a time when I couldn't bear this, when I wanted to be separate from him. That has passed. We have negotiated, between us, some kind of balance. I admire his patience with me, his willingness to adapt. But then I admire, too, my own adaptations. I begin to believe that I'm not so terrible after all.

THIS. This is what I'll remember this book by, with tears in my eyes. I can't ignore all the walking, the struggle with it, all the paths and maps, I loved all of it. But this. This paragraph. A woman finding it hard to establish a connection with her baby boy. Finding touch to be a tickling, burning or shuddering thing, unbearable if not used to the person, loving Bert but not in the way other women love their babies, grieving when he and her husband find it hard to accept her and need time away form her and her still finding her way to them and making them love her for who she is. I did not find many experiences of hers foreign to me, I understood so much of her struggles and her thinking. I won't ask myself a lot of questions though, for now I am just happy with books like this as an inspiration for my own life and my own ways of coping. I hope I find people around me as accepting as her husband and find the peace she managed to attain at last.

Katherine May, I am forever grateful to you for writing this astonishing book, I loved it!

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes going on a walk can solve things, it gives your brain a chance to work in the background, the natural world can help calm things and it helps with fitness. Katherine May thought it would help her too, she wanted to try and understand why she couldn’t cope with the smallest of things anymore, why motherhood had been so overwhelming and why the world was pressing in on her.

The walk that she wanted to do was the South West Coast Path. This had its own set of problems though. It is quite long at 630 miles and it was the other side of the country from where they lived. But between her and her husband they came up with a plan that in theory would work; he would look after their son during the day while she is walking sections of it and pick her up at the end. She needed to keep the sea to her right and it would all work out.

Every scrap of noise – and I mean visual noise too, and the noise made by chaos and movement, drains me. Half an hour in a crowd or a noisy bar and I am hollowed out entirely. But the noise of the sea is different; it nourishes me. It allows me to reset.

It is on this walk that she has a chance encounter. While listening to the radio she hears someone talking about Asperger’s Syndrome and the answers that she hears are almost exactly the same as she would have given. This revelation is a bit of a shock, but knowing this, begins the long process of coming to terms with it and understanding just why she is different rather than simply awkward, arrogant or unfeeling.

The Maori have recently developed a new set of words to adapt their lexicon for the twenty-first century. Autism is ‘takiwatanga’ meaning ‘in your own time and space’. I find something in this definition that I’ve been craving all my life – the restless urge to live in the time and space that I was born to perceive rather than to fit badly into the one that suits everyone else.

This book is an open and honest account of her discovery of herself and a realisation of her limitations. May’s, Asperger’s diagnosis isn’t a label that will weigh her down rather it is a confirmation that she knew she was different in many ways to most other people. As her doctor tells her, there is no cure, but there are many ways that we can help you with it. There are parts of this where the writing is really beautiful and other parts where, rightly so, her emotional overload explodes on the page. I liked this overall, and if you think that you might be on the spectrum for autism then I would recommend reading this.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF around page 130. This book involves walking, complaining about the weather, and meeting up with her son and husband in parking lots and pubs. Larger, rinse, repeat.
She seems to be annoyed by her son and husband a lot as are they with her. Again, lather, rinse, repeat.

[Calum Mackenzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mixed bag. Most of the book is detailed description of particular walks so if that’s what you like - great. Then a chunk of the book is describing her life and struggles with Autism - interesting but maybe more so if you have it or have someone close who has.

Occasionally, Katherine’s writing is beautifully poetic and atmospheric at points, and her discussions of ‘the electricity of things’ is wonderful but these are only occasional. A lot of the book seems to describe her son who’s only rarely described as doing anything near likeable - for the most part he seems impolite, hyperactive leaving me why she chooses to focus on such negative aspects of parenthood.

As for her husband ‘H’...he rarely gets positive mentions leading to a real ‘whiny’ voice to a lot of the book. She also gave up several aspects of the walk(S) leading me to wonder what was the point of it all?!!!

Cheryl Strayd’s ‘Wild’ is a far better book and even ‘The Salt Path’ despite strongly disliking it is better. I’m so disappointed as Katherine May is clearly a talented writer but it’s rare to find a memoir with so many unlikeable characters, including the author.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I preferred May's book Wintering, though I loved her ambivalent reflections on identifying as autistic as an adult. She is very self-critical in certain passages, which felt very raw; it is difficult in a world that generally does not recognize or accommodate neurodiversity to not turn the critical eye inward and self-blame for sensory and social needs. May weaves together her own abortive plan to make a hiking circuit with her journey toward an ASD diagnosis, the complexity of her marriage, which has to manage her needs before she knows how to explain or articulate them, and the demands of motherhood, which both make her feel connected and also stifled. The emotional terrain and indeed the wild terrain, as May describes cliffsides and rocky beaches in Dover, are vivid and jagged. But because it all comes together so beautifully in Wintering, a book that projects her greater acceptance of herself and recognition of the need for rest, it was hard to move backwards into this prickly and static territory of self-doubt, wandering, and aching need. Perhaps that speaks to the effectiveness of the book, however; I found it uncomfortable to live in her in-betweens, and I'm so glad that her later book reflects her putting down strong roots and cherishing rather than castigating her particular needs.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an autistic woman who enjoys walking through the wild and reading memoirs you would think this memoir about an autistic woman walking through the wild would be perfect. Alas, not quite.

[Sadie Slater · Rating 4 out of 5]

Katherine May's The Electricity of Every Living Thing is subtitled 'One Woman's Walk with Asperger's', and it is both a walking memoir and the story of May's realisation that she was autistic and how she came to terms with that understanding. I first heard about it when I read this post by the author, about the ways in which her experience as an autistic person differs from the clichés of autism depicted in fiction by neurotypical authors, and, given that I love walking and strongly suspect that I am not entirely neurotypical myself, I thought it sounded really interesting.

The book devotes roughly equal attention to walking and autism; each chapter describes a walk May took, either a stage in her attempt to walk the South West Coast Path or walks near her home in Kent when distance and winter weather made the SWCP impractical, and combines descriptions of landscape and the experience of walking with musings on the events and emotional history of May's life, reanalysed in the light of autism. Unlike some walking memoirs I've read, which seem to concentrate on the discomfort of walking long distances in all weathers, May really manages to capture both the joy and the slog of walking, and the way in which it only takes a very small thing - a bird sighting, a sudden view, a slant of sunlight - to turn a day that had been a slog into a joy; even though the SWCP sounds like tough going, this was a book that made me want to put my boots on and get outside, not a book that made me glad I was safe and warm indoors. I also found the sections about May's autism incredibly, and uncomfortably (if not unexpectedly) relatable; the sense of difference persisting even after learning to act in the same ways as the people around her, the descriptions of the impossibility of ignoring sensory inputs, of somehow getting things slightly wrong when everyone else seemed to understand the rules, all felt very familiar to me. There is also a third strand to the book, about May's experience of motherhood, which, given that I am and always have been entirely devoid of any kind of maternal instinct, I couldn't relate to at all, other than to be glad to be steadfastly childfree, but that was also interesting as an insight into what is, obviously, a very common experience that I am never going to share. I liked the book a lot and found a lot to think about in there.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, May has a unique way of seeing the world and a gift for helping the reader to understand how she is feeling. I began to wonder if my aunt's frequently expressed opinion that everyone in the family is "a little aspie" had merit.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most passionately immersive, compelling, and gorgeously written memoir that I've read in a very long time. I loved every moment of it, and I'm glad to own a copy for re-reading in the future.

[Lena]

Wmusiłam w siebie tę książkę, żeby móc ze spokojnym sumieniem przejść do „Zimowania”, tytułu mocno polecanego przez książkowo zaufaną koleżankę. Nie chcę pisać nic na temat „Przesilenia”, bo boję się, że z moich palców padnie o jedno słowo za dużo, a potem będę się z tym niepotrzebnie gryzła. Nie podobała mi się i na tym poprzestańmy.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone who finds certain landscapes and coastlines get under their skin.

"I will unashamedly say that difficult, complicated people can achieve great things if they're allowed to create their own conditions, and if they're allowed their time alone by the sea."

[Fe · Rating 5 out of 5]

objectively (for lack of better word) maybe more of a 4-4,5 but a personal 5

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was handed on this book to read, I think perhaps with some kind of comment which suggested the previous reader or I might not be totally wowed.

It was then recommended by Tom Haughton as part of his excellent little set of 'book club' vlogs for #30DaysWild... and I belatedly remembered it was there waiting on my shelves. He spoke of the book as about finding the benefits of nature for various forms of dis-ease.... soooooooo many of those now.... and I plan to read The Salt Path, also about walking the South West Coastal Path, and have accompanied Simon Armitage, in print, on his own walk of the path.

So there will be comparisons. Yet the book is probably much more (I'm trying to avoid some spoilers) about something else again and the greater part is about Katherine's discovery of an autistic identity. If you are looking for travel writing from this, you are likely to be disappointed - I appreciate that most (readable) travel writing tends to be about the author's personal response but it felt taken to extremes here. I don't suppose Appledore needs more people encouraging to go but 'nothing there'? There's some rather cludged on environmental stuff.

It was an interesting and worthwhile book, beautifully written. She has valuable insights into the much wider possibilities of an attention to detail (she's no stereotypical obsessive mathmo, she studied psychology and at the time of writing this book, worked in a university creative writing department), her experience of new motherhood something to consider. The account of her GP visit to discuss the possibility of autism is particularly fascinating (and heartening)

But for me, this was not an entirely likeable memoir. I found myself thinking of how sometimes there's a thin line between autism and being an arse and it may be possible to be both. She makes some unpleasant remarks of a very hackneyed sort about other mothers. She writes, as many do, of all the adjustments and mistakes she has had to make to 'pass' and how overwhelming the world is, and how difficult life was growing up and well into adulthood. It sometimes felt as though most of the book was implicitly describing the accommodations her husband makes to make her life more comfortable, and I am not sure how I feel about an air of entitlement about these (and yes, I question this sort of thing massively in books by men) I know there are phases in relationships where one may need to 'carry' the other (this was after all a 'project'), and that childbearing and rearing, as she describes, presents special challenges to the autistic person, especially a mother... but I wondered if he ever gets a turn... and if she really can't help that not happening, is it appropriate to describe herself as not disabled?

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been reading what feels like 'loads' of what one might lazily refer to as 'autism memoirs' lately, my twelve-year-old daughter having recently been finally diagnosed with an ASD. I felt thoroughly sick of them - they make me feel sad and worried - partly because, despite knowing the diagnosis fits, I still feel like I am somehow I am imposter for claiming this label for her, like the parents who are mentioned as being perceived as trying to give their kids a leg-up in the education system through such a diagnosis.

Anyway, I read this book purely because it is also about walking the SWCP. Like the author, I love South Devon. I was looking forward to the sections on Torcross, Bantham, Hall Sands and so on, so I was disappointed that she had pretty much stopped walking by that point.

That said, I enjoyed the 'autism part' of the book much more than I expected. It was ultimately a hopeful and measured approach to living with an ASD although I feel that towards the end she downplays how much it affects her life, saying she does not consider herself disabled, having listed how her mental health has been disruptive and disabling for most of her life - missing huge chunks of school, and often barely able to function.

The other part that made me feel uncomfortable was the rather sneering way she described the other new mothers she attempted to befriend after having her baby. Her description of their inane conversation and over-concern about their weight and body image did not come across as a genuine lack of comprehension (the feel-known ASD struggle with social situations) but, rather, an intellectual superiority. I feel that the comments elide the possibility that some of these these women were also suffering from PND or were completely exhausted and alienated by the situation in which they now found themselves and were also just doing their best to cope, to fit in, to pass.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Wintering" was not my favorite book - but this one? Amazing. I also struggle with the "electricity" of people, noise, and sensory stimulation so, reading about May's journey to an autism diagnosis and, even more, toward simply accepting her overly-sensitive nervous system (more severe than mine but many similarities) was a comforting journey for me in terms of "oh, this happens to other people, too," even if I'm not on the autism spectrum. Her hiking ambition is also inspiring. Movement is often so healing and revealing and it's good for me to be reminded of that.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely and grounded. This book took me a bit by surprise—it wasn’t what I expected but I loved walking with May through the coastal trail of England and her journey towards discovering herself as autistic. Beautiful prose, I love the slow and meandering way she approaches what mostly feels like a memoir—I resonated a lot with her journey as a Neuro divergent woman.

[Sofinka Kalinka · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t see a point of the book. And if a man would write something similar everyone would be up in arms.

It’s unclear why the author stays with her partner who she clearly does but any respect for, she complains about everything half of the time and shows zero accountability for her behaviour.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling and incredibly eye-opening memoir. There was so much I wasn't aware of, so much that our current society needs to understand. Highly recommend.

[Makenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved Katherine May's insights into her discovery as an adult that she was autistic, and how she weaves in her writing about coastal walking with musings about writers who lived and walked in the same places, all while learning to be more compassionate and gentle with herself. I found this to be quite a comforting and soothing read, and one definitely to return to.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Re-read April 2023 - This is definitely a read once only kind of book! The Asperger's diagnosis part is good as it helps others to hear descriptions of behaviour and thought processes. The descriptive elements of the countryside and the sea remain entertaining. What becomes a bit trying on the second read is the "moaning" about the walk itself- the injuries and the pain and the being out of shape and so on. No-one is making you walk the path to be fair, you've chosen to do it so shush with the blister, sore feet, achy hips moaning!! This one gets donated to the library.

Original review: A very interesting account of what it is like to live with Asperger's, and the measures taken to "calm the soul" as it were.

The descriptions of the countryside and seascapes experienced during Katherine's walks are rich and illustrative, and her honesty regarding her relationship with her partner and son are refreshing.

In light of the recent increase in numbers of women being diagnosed with a spectrum disorder, this makes for pertinent reading.

[Raeanne Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was diagnosed with ASD and (inattentive) ADHD at age 28 (this year 😬). It took a year to get an appointment with a psychiatrist for the diagnosis, which was frustrating in itself. But after receiving it, it's been WAAY more emotional than I expected. You go from thinking you're "normal" to being forced to re-examine your whole life through the lens of your diagnosis. It's helpful and it makes sense. But it also dredges up a lot of grief and anger.

May explained her late-in-life diagnosis in a vary relatable way against the backdrop of her goal of walking the South West Coast Path in the UK. She has an eloquent way of writing, which was very pleasant to listen to (I listen to books more these days). I found myself wanting to write down the way she describes her symptoms, because they helped me identify with my own. With the book being such a short listen (about 8 hours), I may go back and do just that! I highly recommend this book, especially if you or a loved one suspects they're on the spectrum.

[Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t recommend this book enough for ND people or just people who want to have more compassion and empathy for the ND people in their lives.

“Well, here’s the thing. When you have spent your entire life so far – childhood and adulthood – feeling as though you’re continually circling the plug hole of not coping, you end up wanting to make sense of it. It really isn’t so hard to understand. When you’ve made multiple attempts to pull yourself together, and to tamp down your own experience of the world, but it’s still painfully evident that you’re different from the people around you; when that difference, or the process of trying to ignore it, frequently makes you sick; when you realise it will probably shorten your life because you drink too much to cope, or your blood pressure runs high, or you wonder how many more times you can withstand the feeling of crashing out of the mainstream world and falling through the cracks; then you might just begin to think that it would be convenient to name the thing that’s made everything so bloody hard.”

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truth be told, "walking memoirs" really aren't my jam. I can't get into the experience of actually WANTING to schlep around in intensely uncomfortable wild territory just to prove something to oneself... or even worse, because one enjoys it. Nothing could be less relatable to me, nor more difficult to wrap my brain around. Nevertheless, I went into this one having read some excerpts--almost all related to the topic of May's experiences with being autistic in a neurotypical world--and figured I could put up with the walking stuff, if I could get more of the autistic narrative which was, in fact, deeply relatable! Sadly, I found that the walking narrative, no doubt a particular interest of May's, never became as interesting to me as the neurodiversity sections (a particular interest of mine), and the book is probably 60/40 in favor of walking. Alas.

But when she's writing with her lens particularly focused on her autistic experience, WOW.

[Kodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, in my experience reading any books about autism I can get my hands on, this book was the most rewarding and relatable to me, often painfully so. The author manages to capture parts of (some people’s) autistic experience that I didn’t even know could potentially be connected, such as the feeling of having too many words in your brain blocking communication with others, and the overwhelming desire to take whichever path is the longest and most difficult. Her writing style is a little bit cynical and bittersweet, and the language used to explore the way her mind works just really clicked for me, her analogies are gorgeous and I think our brains work very similarly.

I found this book to be a great comfort in this very turbulent time in my life, and I plan to buy a copy so I can underline quotes and sections that really spoke to me. I also now really want to walk the South West Coast Path, lol.