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 being brought to the prison occurs at a moment when his family is in crisis. His awakening interest in girls and his parents' conflict over how to deal with his autism have brought the stresses the family are under to breaking point.Eddy's Asperger's 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. Paul Lyons' first novel, 'The Eden Man' won a London Times Book Of The Year Award and he received a New Writers Fellowship from the Australian Literature Board.