Madeleine Ryan still remembers the moment inspiration for her debut novel struck.
It was 2017 and the now 32-year-old was lying on her bed in her parent’s home in Windsor, in Melbourne’s inner-north, as her mother’s book club roared outside. In the quiet of her mind, a protagonist of her novel started speaking to her, giving her the first three lines of what would be her debut novel.
Ryan had just moved to regional Victoria to escape the noise of the city and had disabled her social media.
“I made a lot of changes in my life where I started hearing the protagonist's voice and I think in a sense a lot of those changes created a space for me to actually hear her, and that then led to this world unfolding. I just had to continue to nurture and nourish and discipline myself to keep choosing to allow it to unfold till eventually it led to the book.”
A Room Called Earth follows a night in the life of a young neurodiverse women who lives in Melbourne's affluent Toorak as she prepares for a party. The imagery is sensual and warm; the protagonist has a heightened awareness of scents and sounds, painting the book in luscious 3-D. It’s woven with her acute observations on those around her and musings on spirituality and gender, as she jars against the pretentious high-flying crowds she moves in – an experience leaving the blunt and plain spoken woman feeling confused and isolated.
Madeleine Ryan. Source: Supplied
But Ryan’s protagonist is not to be pitied; independent and sexually confident, she goes on to find love, freedom (and delicious sandwiches) on her own terms. Labelled by The Independent, and mentioned as a title by the New York Times, Ryan is a bold and powerful new voice in the Australian literary scene.
It was months into writing the book before Ryan would finally receive her autism diagnosis, and it came only after a battery of tests, numerous doctors and at one point being misdiagnosed with mania - a process she describes as ‘heinous’.
“The actual receiving of the information – this is who I am – was hugely relieving and empowering…It made sense of so much that hadn’t been put all together. It certainly joined the jots for me."
The fact that Ryan was an only child of parents who were both TV and film critics dissuaded her from writing as a career. Her ambitions swerved to acting. It took her eight years to finish an arts degree at Melbourne University. Only later, when she began writing articles for media, she hit her stride and experienced a fluidity that made writing feel like a natural fit.
“Schooling structure was the antithesis of how my brain and my insides were wired. It never felt like I could meet the criteria, try as I might. I was such a good student. I was so dedicated, and I wanted to get things right and constantly the feedback I would get is, 'Clearly not stupid, but you haven’t done what we have asked'.”
Despite the relief of diagnosis, Ryan struggled with stigma and the pigeon-holing others imposed on the neurodivergent, and because of that she has deliberately resisted labelling her protagonist or marketing the novel as an 'autism' book.
“If people ask me, yes, she is [neurodivergent], but if you didn’t immediately know that, that’s fine - you are just connecting with her as a human which is what everyone ultimately wants.
"When I think about what I want someone to take from the story, by the time they get to the end of it, it’s not 'autistic people are just epic!' it’s more 'being human is epic'.”
When I think about what I want someone to take from the story, by the time they get to the end of it, it’s not 'autistic people are just epic!' it’s more 'being human is epic.'
Ryan's book highlights the universality of the painful sting of social rejection and dislocation; through the unique, almost anthropological perspective, only an outsider gazing on a world they don't fit into, can offer.
“I do believe neurodiversity is a kind of superpower because it illuminates everybody's sensitivities. I believe that those who are neurodiverse are here to highlight, question, challenge, but mainly illuminate what most people are struggling with, or are sensitive to, but are skimming over in service of fitting in socially."
Ryan says like other minorities, the neurodivergent often have an antenna to social ills others were only dimly aware of.
“I do believe there is a sacred role the neurodivergence have,” she says, offering the example of supermarkets and - in the novel - hospitals. Places that can be draining, overly stimulating environments full of bad lighting.
“They are structured to be draining and we might be the ones melting down in the supermarket but we are also the ones highlighting something that affects everyone, but other people aren’t slowing down enough to make changes or take responsibility for.”
It’s mirrored by Ryan’s early sensitivity to social media, now being revealed in as run by companies courting addiction and using gaming techniques to keep users hooked. Ryan describes the medium as leaving her feeling like "crap" and "feeding off people’s souls".
“We [the neurodivergent] actually exist to slow everybody down and take responsibility for things that are affecting everyone on some level, but it’s born out of all this pain, and feeling like you don’t fit in; and feeling like this is all overwhelming, and feeling like a victim of a world that’s completely skewed towards a certain kind of person.”
“I have certainly been through times of great depression and anxiety with that, and feelings of isolation and alienation. It’s taken years and probably my writing [to realise that] I have a role in my different-ness that can help everybody and not just autistic people."
