A Kind Of Spark by Elle McNicoll

A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Kind of Spark centres on neurodivergent Addie and her campaign for a historical memorial in her hometown. The memorial is for the women who were killed in the witch trials, centuries ago, by the townfolk. Addie learns about these women during a school project and how they were labelled as witches and died in awful circumstances, simply due to their differences. She decides to stand up for them, to tell and honour their stories, and in the process she breaks your heart and makes it whole a thousand times over.

Ever since its publication, A Kind Of Spark has been at the heart of a vital, important conversation about autism, neurodivergence and representation and I’ve appreciated (and admired) what this story, and indeed McNicoll herself, have done for children’s literature. I will always admire those books that do what they have to do, in the way they have to do it, and in the way that only they can do it, and I will always admire the publishers who understand what those books can do in the world and their vital importance.

And what A Kind Of Spark does is very specific, very smart, and very wonderful, because every word of it is full of utter belief and truth and faith in character and circumstance. This book knows what it is doing and how it is going to get there and it made me cry, several times, at how much it trusts its characters and their choices. It’s a fierce, remarkable debut, and one which just has this palpable sense of heart about it. The familial relationships are particularly well done and just ring with truth. Things go well, things go poorly, but underneath it all is this family that burn with love and respect and faith in each other and what they are together.

This is such a good book. McNicoll writes with a very vivid honesty and truth about being autistic and even though I hated it, she also explores the range of reactions that people can have to neurodivergency. Adults and children make good choices and bad and sometimes we just kind of have to witness the hideous nature of being different in a normative world and rage against it all and I kind of loved that McNicoll went there because the story had to go there. There’s no coyness about this; it’s a book determined to tell its story honestly and with truth and even during these difficult, horrible moments, you know at every inch that it is full of kindness and love for its characters, it has their backs, it loves them and because of that, you do too.

So that’s A Kind Of Spark; a wonderful, truthful, honest story about difference, about being autistic, about being your own person, about fighting for a way to be in the world on your own terms, about being a kind of remarkable. I adored it.



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