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Please Don't Hug Me

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

A funny-serious story about what happens when you stop trying to be the person other people expect you to be and give yourself a go.

Erin is looking forward to Schoolies, at least she thinks she is. But things are not going to plan. Life is getting messy, and for Erin, who is autistic, that's a big problem. She's lost her job at Surf Zone after an incident that clearly was not her fault. Her driving test went badly even though she followed the instructions perfectly. Her boyfriend is not turning out to be the romantic type. And she's missing her brother, Rudy, who left almost a year ago.

But now that she's writing letters to him, some things are beginning to make just a tiny bit of sense.


Kay Kerr is a former journalist and community newspaper editor from Brisbane, now living on the Sunshine Coast with her husband and daughter and working as a freelance writer. Kay was writing the first draft of Please Don't Hug Me, her first book, when she received her own autism-spectrum diagnosis.

'This book is beautifully intimate, and so authentic. You're going to love getting to know its central character, Erin. I'm so thrilled this book exists.' Claire Christian

'A moving and insightful story about finding your place in the world.' Nina Kenwood

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    • Books+Publishing

      March 5, 2020
      At the suggestion of her psychologist, Erin writes letters to her absent older brother, Rudy. Erin is 17 years old, behind on her savings for Schoolies and freshly unemployed. There was an incident. Another one. The kind of incident Erin describes as an ‘outburst’ and others call a ‘meltdown’. Erin has autism. Yet Erin’s autism isn’t simply a set of challenges but also a set of characteristics. It makes her think differently; it makes her who she is. As Erin writes, ‘Without ASD there is no me, because it’s as much a part of who I am as my skin or my blood.’ Kay Kerr is a skilful writer who deftly balances the serious and the light in this coming-of-age narrative. In many ways, everything is serious to Erin. The question of how best respond to a joke is just as important as dealing with death and grieving. And yet the book is intensely amusing as Erin works her way to authenticity and acceptance. Please Don’t Hug Me investigates the ways in which having a ‘limited edition brain’ like Erin’s makes life feel like an endless anthropological study, and how that is both a hard and beautiful thing. This is another exciting release in Australian young adult fiction that I can’t wait to recommend to a host of sharp and curious minds. Charlotte Guest is a bookseller and PhD candidate in Geelong, Victoria

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Languages

  • English

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