Do You Think This Is Strange?
A Novel
Shortlisted for the 2016 Amazon.ca First Novel Award
Longlisted for the 2016 Leacock Medal for Humour Writing
Winner of an Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY)
"Outstanding debut." — Publisher's Weekly
Freddy has problems. Some of them are because he's autistic. Most of them are because he's a teenager.
When he’s seven years old, Freddy's mother walks him to the train station, sits him on a bench, kisses his forehead, and disappears from his life. In a few short days, everything changes. His father moves him across town, enrolls him in a different school, and takes him away from little Saskia, the only friend he’s ever had.
Ten years later, Freddy is struggling to get through his last year of high school. He painstakingly avoids interactions with other students, who don’t understand his hyper-literal perspective. But then Saskia appears, and she’s different from the laughing little girl he remembers. She no longer smiles, and she doesn’t speak.
As they reconnect, Freddy begins to remember what really happened ten years ago. And everything he thought he knew begins to unravel.
Both humorous and heartbreaking, Do You Think This Is Strange? is a coming-of-age tale you won’t soon forget.
Aaron Cully Drake has written for newspapers and magazines and is a former reporter and editor. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, son, and autistic daughter, all of whom keep advising him to shut up. Do You Think This Is Strange? is his first novel.
