A Different Type Of Adventure Story.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this review are those of the reviewer and not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing. The reviewer was not paid or offered any inducement for this review but was provided with a free review copy.

Cooee Baby is a book that works on many levels.
 
If you just want an adventure story, then great. Five stars all the way. It really works as adventure.
 
But on the deeper level, as a story about  a neuro-divergent young woman, there is a lot going on. I’ll cover some of the nuances later in this review.
 
Athena Fernandez is the neuro-divergent young woman. Her real first name is Awhina, but she doesn’t like it because people don’t know how to pronounce it, so she changes it, and to everyone other than her parents she becomes Athena.  Early in the story Athena is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome*, which is one particular syndrome on the much broader autism scale.
 
Not only is Athena neuro-divergent, however, she is also a brilliant scholar, with a particular talent for maths and sciences. This takes her to Cambridge University where we start to get a real insight into her personality. This is something I will again return to later in this review.
 
After graduation with an honours degree, and starting to prepare her PhD proposal, Athena’s mother offers her the opportunity to go on a five-week cruise around the islands of Indonesia. This is not your normal “floating gin palace” type cruise but is on a much smaller ship where more time is allowed to experience the diverse cultures that will be encountered.
 
I don’t want to give any away spoilers, but I can’t tell you about the key story point without revealing some of what happens, but I’ll try not to tell you too much.
 
Athena is involved in a swimming accident that threatens her life. It also disfigures her. She is rescued and taken to Papua where she is treated by the shaman of a local tribe, the Walukek. She is then kidnapped by a neighbouring tribe, the Suamu, who are in a perpetual state of war with the Walukek.

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The author, Charles Moberley

There is always a risk in placing a European in a situation like this that they succumb to “white saviour” syndrome, trying to modernise the indigenous people for their “betterment”.

This was common in 19th and early 20th century literature as it reflected the colonial values of the day. Fortunately, author Charles Moberley doesn’t succumb to this in Cooee Baby and Athena does nothing that would change the culture of either of the tribes with which she lives. Indeed, the culture of the Suamu is central to the plot.
 
So, having said at the start of this review that I would award 5 stars for this book as an adventure story, why have I only awarded 4 stars?
 
The answer is in the development of Athena’s character within the story. Asperger’s Syndrome doesn’t make the person intrinsically unlikeable, but Athena’s character I found very hard to engage with. Her overbearing mother and emotionally absent father must, therefore, account for a lot of her behaviour, rather than her neuro-divergence.
 
Because, despite all her bravado, Athena is also very vulnerable. Her outspoken and sometimes obnoxious behaviour is, in part, motivated by her feelings of vulnerability and this isn’t explored in any depth. It means that the picture we get of Athena seems to be incomplete. She behaves like a spoiled brat a lot of the time, but her neuro-divergence doesn’t account for that.
 
While Athena may suffer from Asperger’s, she is also capable of analysing both her own behaviour and that of others, which means that beneath the surface she does understand emotions and their functions, but we are offered too few glimpses of that part of Athena’s personality, which means that she remains, largely, unlikeable.
 
I didn’t expect some damascene conversion from Athena, in which she changed her behaviour significantly. That would not fit with her neuro-divergence. However, she is portrayed as a person in possession of complex analytical and reasoning skills, so I would have expected her to develop an understanding that the way people act towards her is a reflection of how she acts towards them. But that insight is lacking.

There is also Athena's resilience. People on the autism scale are not known for dealing well with the external environment. They often try to shut out the world. But not Athena. She may be frightened, but she stares down her assailants with a bravery that Jack Reacher would nod his head towards. That too, I feel, speaks of something deeper in her character than can be accounted for by her neuro-divergence. It was this quality that finally won me over and kept me reading the book.

But, if you can get past that characterisation, this book has a great deal going for it. As I said at the top of this review, it is great as an action adventure and if you can read it that way then you are likely to enjoy it immensely.
 
To find out more about “Cooee Baby” by Charles Moberley, click here.
 
* According to the charity Mencap, Asperger’s Syndrome is no longer a term used by the medical profession to describe Athena’s form of neuro-divergence.  The person after whom the disorder was named (Hans Asperger) had strong connections to the Nazis, which is why the term has fallen out of favour. If you wish to be politically correct you would now describe the condition as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
 
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