Freya Harte is not a Puzzle

Méabh Collins is a writer and scholar from Dublin. She holds an M.Phil in Children's Literature from Trinity College Dublin, where she is currently pursuing a PhD. In recent years, she has worked as a primary school teacher and in children's and Irish language publishing. She lives in Dublin with her husband and their rescue greyhound. This is her first novel.

Neurodiversity is the focus of several new titles this month with a standout being Meabh Collins’s debut, Freya Harte Is Not A Puzzle. Collins has a background in both education and children’s literature and blends these skills beautifully in an account of being a newly diagnosed autistic teenage girl who very firmly does not want “special treatment in school. I don’t want to be singled out for being different. If I could just figure out how to be normal, then I wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff.” Although the protagonist, Freya, has a supportive adult in school, there is also an utter wagon of a teacher who gets cranky when her errors are pointed out and says things like: “Sure, half of them are diagnosed with something these days. You’d be hard pressed to keep up.” Freya is also conscious that despite the oft-trotted- reminder that everyone is more concerned with themselves than anyone else, “the beady eyes of bored schoolgirls” are utterly terrifying. The hopeful ending is an earned one with a shrewd eye on the unspoken “rules” of female friendships