Eddy and the Fiend — Paul Lyons

Four voices:An autistic boy at puberty.His 'refrigerator' mother who blames herself for his autism.His psychotherapist father, frustrated with his job as a prison doctor.The paedophile child killer whose greatest crime is in his mind.Four voices weaving a story at the boundary between language and transcendence. The story of 'Eddy And The Fiend' takes place in a country town in NSW, home to a maximum security prison. It's the early nineteen-nineties, the forced holding 'cure' for autism is in vogue and Laingian 'anti-psychiatry' still popular.Eddy's chance encounter with a psychopathic child killer who's being brought to the prison occurs at the moment when the awakening of his interest in girls brings the conflict caused by his autism within his family to crisis point.Eddy's Asperger Syndrome 'island of excellence' is verbal mimicry and he recounts the gathering tragedy of his parents' disagreement amid the media furore surrounding the 'Fiend' with an autistic savant's unnerving clarity.