Role Model

Once again, Elle McNicholl demonstrates her remarkable facility to create memorable characters that all readers, both neurotypical and neurodivergent, will be able to relate to, while at the same time tackling head on misconceptions about neurodiversity. Teenagers are all highly self-conscious and will entirely empathise with her character Ariel’s situation and imagine how they would feel to be dragged from their home and forced to attend a new school and go through again the whole process of fitting in and finding friends, let alone facing the ordeal of being in the public eye because their mother is the newly elected Prime Minister. When she faints during a school assembly, after being put in a difficult situation, and the secretly filmed event goes viral, Ariel is forced to follow the advice of the  political press team and film a response, which gathers even more attention. More viral videos inevitably follow as she is promoted as an inspirational role model, perpetuating the oft repeated myth that ‘neurodiversity is a superpower’. Followed by paparazzi, invited to formal dinners with royalty etc, she finds herself used by those who want to share her fame, when all she needs is some real friends who can accept her as she really is. In an author note we are told that many of Aeriel’s painful situations are based upon lived experience, which is truly shocking given the unthinking and misguided way the adults and some of the young people in this story behave. Once again, as in previous novels A Kind of Spark and Keedie, McNicoll gives us the supportive elder sister character, who can see what Aeriel is going through. The wonderfully rebellious Fizz is also neurodivergent and with her help and that of some genuine friends Ariel makes in the SEND provision at school, she can begin to take control of her own story. Another real strength is the way in which the range of characters demonstrates that neurodivergent young people are as varied and unique as everyone else. A highly accessible, moving and thought-provoking novel.