Title: White Noise
Author: Raelke Grimmer
Publisher: UWA Publishing, Australia, 2024; RRP: $26.99

White Noise is the debut of Dr Raelke Grimmer, Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at Charles Darwin University. She teaches creative writing and linguistics. White Noise was inspired by her own life.

The story is told using the voice of Emma, known as Em, who is autistic and who lives with her doctor father in Darwin.

The book opens with the grief of both father and daughter after the death of Emma’s mother three and a half years previously. Both are still struggling to come to terms with their loss and the transition into life without her.

That Emma is autistic is not stated directly, alluded to only in the blurb. The earliest reference I found was 17 pages in and then only referred to in a brief aside after a friend’s mother regrets she has forgotten Emma’s food sensitivities, putting dressing on her salad.

‘I forget all the time,’ Dad offers.
‘You do not,’ I counter. It’s true. Since my diagnosis, I don’t think he’s once forgotten to accommodate my preferences.

Although the father and daughter’s grief is an important theme in White Noise, I found the portrayal of Emma’s day-to-day autistic life particularly engrossing.

The main people in Emma’s life are her father, her best friend Summer, an assortment of other teenage friends, and Elliot, with whom she shares a budding attraction. Both Emma and the neurotypical Elliot sharing the usual ups and downs of first love as he learns this side of the girl he falls for.

Emma and her father share a warm and mutually supportive relationship. Her father’s raw grief taking the form of recurrent nightmares where he shouts loudly in his sleep and is unable to calm down until Em goes to comfort him. In return, her father is always there when on occasion Em shuts down or suffers meltdowns when overwhelmed. Always available yet simultaneously leaving her space to live her life on her own terms.

Emma and her best friend Summer enjoy the usual activities and experiences of teenage life in a comfortable, white, middle-class setting. They share the same circle of friends and, since both sets of parents were also friends, Emma and Summer are more like sisters, having known each other for most of their lives.

Her relationship with Summer goes through a difficult patch when Emma wins a sports scholarship that Summer had dearly wanted, exacerbated by the fact that Summer is also having problems at home. Her parents have three other children aged between one and five, the care of which too often falls on her despite the fact that, at 16, she needs space to live her own life. In one scene, a hurt and exasperated Summer cries that Emma’s autism means that the attention must always be on caring for her and not so much her friend who has difficulties of her own. I found this reference to how the demands of Em’s (perfectly justifiable) needs can sometimes require more from neurotypical friends than they have to give refreshingly real, with both girls’ needs recognised.

Initially I had a problem with the almost too good to be true depiction of Em’s life. She and her friends are all physically attractive and popular. The families are warm and supportive. Her friends like her as she is, and are willing to put their own lives on hold to assist when she struggles to cope. Professionals in her life such as her teachers and medical staff are all uniformly pleasant and helpful. But this is not a given in real life. Given the highly sensitive and vulnerable inner autistic world as depicted, the danger that could be done to a child or teenager where the family was uncaring and unsupportive and resources limited became increasingly apparent as I read.

While thinking about this, however, I came across an article where the author herself questions her right to write an article about female autism and how it is depicted on TV – voicing a concern whether writing the female autistic self may need a voice other than her own. She writes:

I wrote this piece with hesitation. I only ever wanted my diagnosis to be for myself to know myself. I’m not sure this this conversation needs another voice like mine: female, yes, and     autistic, yes, but also white, neurotypical passing, privileged.

However, she then goes on to credit her own diagnosis and understanding of herself to the autistic content creators of two TV shows she watched constantly, sharing her own experience to illustrate how it made it possible to get to that point herself. Any voice that can do that can be a voice in the wilderness, regardless of where or who it came from.

I owe my own voice and understanding of myself to Cromer and Hayden’s eloquence in  sharing so much of themselves as they brought Matilda and Quinni to the screen. Not to  mention the countless other content creators writers, activists and artists who provided information and solace on my diagnostic road in their infallible commitment to breaking down autistic stereotypes with unreserved honesty. Without these voices in popular culture, I would still be searching for this piece of my identity. [my bold] Until the stereotypical representations of autism shift to reflect the entirety of the spectrum, there will never be enough voices.

My only other concern, was that the depictions of Darwin lacked any indigenous Australian cultural presence or character despite the richly detailed descriptions of the Northern Territory landscape. It left a strange disconnect, as if it were a warm and tropical place anywhere.

There is an acknowledgement of country and reference to the traditional owners at the start but omitting them from the story itself, the ‘popular culture’ element, diluted its impact on the imagination, especially while simultaneously celebrating Darwin lavishly.

White Noise fits the genre of Young Adult novel, and suits readers from teenager and upwards. It would be helpful for those who might find something of themselves in Emma’s experiences as an autistic main character. I also think it might also be of value to neurotypical parents, friends, colleagues and acquaintances who may recognise themselves and others.

It is also a poignant sharing of grief and the time it takes to heal.

Reviewed by: Rhonda Cotsell

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group

Review copy provided by the publisher