"Far from the Tree" by Andrew Solomon

I bought this thick scholarly book because it caught my eye when I was passing through the downtown Chapters. The cover was a nice gold colour, it had some award stickers on it, and the subject matter interested me. It is written by a gay guy, who used his own experiences to extrapolate to other types of children who are different from their parents, and so horizontal, as opposed to vertical. It includes deaf people, dwarves, schizophrenia etc etc. I quite enjoyed most of the chapters but I did skip the one on children of rape, and most of the one on musical prodigies. I had been hoping for intellectual prodigies instead, and have very little interest in musical giftedness.

To my surprise, I found the chapter on schizophrenia to be totally boring to me. I had thought I would be riveted... perhaps the problem was too much knowledge. I did end up skipping or skimming quite a bit of stuff, but I am glad I read this book. It definitely broadened my knowledge of the human condition,