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Here is an autobiographical novel that poses an important and oft-ignored question. Is parenting the art of preparing a child for ‘normal life’, or does it mean teasing out the things that make a child unique? In other words: Ought the parent to try to enter the child’s world as far as possible, or rather do their best to make the child step into the parent’s world? 

Eliza Kącka’s book frames a story about child-rearing as a detective novel. The reader figures out along with the narrator how to navigate her daughter’s unusual behaviour, and for much of this story we are invited to join her in deciding just how neuro-normative her child, who is on the autism spectrum, is and whether this should be seen as a concern or a blessing. The antagonists – including a watchful neighbour and a stern preschool teacher – come down hard on the side of normalising the child. Meanwhile, Kącka, through excursions into her own childhood and applying earlier lessons to her experience now as a mother, is inclined to give as much value and respect to the needs of children – and animals or plants – as she does grown-ups. 

A project for a translator who enjoys being loose and creative with language,Yesterday You Were Green with Anger is a book that will speak to anyone who has experienced their own slapdash adventure of parenting and worried, even for an instant, whether they were getting it all wrong.