Finding Phoebe

Finding Phoebe Synopsis

Phoebe is autistic. She prefers to stay in her comfort zone: walking her dog, writing fantasy fiction, surviving school with as few incidents as possible. When her best (and only) friend rebels and gets a secret boyfriend, Phoebe reluctantly agrees to cover for her.

Before long, Phoebe's dealing with all sorts of things she'd rather not, like deception, fashionable jackets, and the bewildering politics of the school chess club. Breaking the rules has never been Phoebe's thing, but as events take a seriously unexpected turn, she realises there's more to her than she ever imagined...

A letter from the author:
Dear reader/bookseller/buyer/other, I wrote this book for my daughter, or a future version of my daughter. Let me explain. Amelia was diagnosed with autism at the age of four. After some discussion, my wife and I decided that we wanted to talk to her about it sooner rather than later.

We wanted her to grow up knowing that she was neurodivergent, and this was just one thing among many that made her a unique human being. So, we wrote her a letter. By then, Amelia was already an avid (and precocious!) reader, having taught herself when she was two, via countless rereadings of Peter Rabbit.

She also seemed to absorb information better when it was written rather than spoken, so we felt having something to read, and come back to, would be especially useful for her. Our aim was to explain to her, in as simple terms as possible, why she experienced the world a little differently from some other people; why she found some things very easy and some things very hard; why she could read fluently, but found some social games impossible to fathom.

I suppose, like most parents, we just wanted to give our daughter the best tools we could to help her understand herself and the world around her. And we wanted to tell her, at the earliest opportunity, that it’s OK to be different – and often it’s more than OK. That as much as our differences can present us with challenges, they can also, sometimes, be the source of our greatest strengths.

In a sense, this novel is a continuation of the same project. Amelia is ten now, but I know she’ll be a teenager in the blink of an eye, and this will bring a whole host of new challenges. Being a teenager is tough for anyone, but it can be particularly tough for autistic girls. It’s the time when social dynamics change, when hormones kick in, when relationships with friends and parents become more complicated – when life, in general, becomes more complicated.

In short, it’s messy, and this book is about two girls – one neurotypical, one not – trying to navigate that mess. It’s about love and friendship, self-acceptance and the acceptance of others. My original hope was that it might help my daughter to negotiate the weird, knotty and sometimes frightening transition from childhood to adulthood, but now that it’s going out into the world, I hope it will prove equally helpful and engaging to others – neurotypical or not. With best wishes, Gavin Extence