The Bottom Line
Pros
- Fascinating autobiography of an autistic savant
- Includes descriptions of Tammet's own thought processes
- Tells a rich life story
Cons
- Tammet's drawings are tough to follow
Description
- Autobiography of Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant
- Published by Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster
- 226 pages long in hardcover
Guide Review - Book Review: Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet
"...Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing," so begins Daniel Tammet's autobiography, Born on a Blue Day. Tammet has synaesthesia: he can figure out almost any mathematical problem by referring to the shapes, colors and textures that represent the problem in his mind. He's also an autistic savant, who notes that he is similar in many ways to Dustin Hoffman's portrayal in the movie Rainman.Unlike Hoffman's Raymond Babbitt, though, Tammet is not only self-aware, he's also amazingly articulate. His life story is told idiosyncratically, filled with odd drawings (not altogether unlike those in the classic children's book The Little Prince. It is also lucid, detailed and surprisingly focused on the people in his life.
Tammet completed his historic pi recital, where he recited pi 22,500 places, in 2004 and became an international phenomenon. A documentary, Brainman, was created in 2005, which tells the story of Tammet's achievement and describes how he learned Icelandic in just seven days. Tammet tries very hard to make it clear to typical readers what it's like to live in his brain. Quite frankly, though, it's confusing. In explaining how he managed to recite pi to 22,500 places, he draws us a squiggly line. "The number slopes upwards," he tells us, "then darkens and becomes bumpy in the middle before curving and meandering down." While I'm sure this is absolutely accurate, it's very tough to really grasp, but perhaps that's just the difference between autistic savants and the rest of us!
