Born on a Blue Day

by Daniel Tammet
226 pp. Free Press, 2006 $24.00

Review by Tabitha Thompson

In his memoir, Born on a Blue Day, Daniel Tammet describes learning the numerical figure pi to the 22,514th decimal and reciting it without error in five hours and nine minutes. Tammet has autism and savant syndrome and has described the sensation he experiences when performing multiple calculations as fireflies lighting up in his head until he tingles with light. 

Tammet’s memoir provides a revealing look at the world of autism, describing such experiences as trying to connect with others, and the need for perfection.

“Whenever I wrote, I pored over every letter and word and period. If I noticed a smudge or error I would erase everything and start over... finishing in a state of near exhaustion, yet with little to show for it,” Tammet writes.

The reader also learns about autism through how he tells his story – listing the exact contents of a suitcase he packs or explaining how he halves a sponge cake recipe, which shows both his thought process to do so and his inability to intuit what his audience would probably already know.

Tammet’s insight is often beautiful as in the following revelation: “I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate gradual process that mustn't be rushed .... I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it.”

Language itself is a simple function for Tammet. He learned Icelandic and began conversing with native speakers in a single week. “It was the strangest thing: the very same abilities that isolated me from my peers as a child had actually helped me to connect with other people in adulthood and to make new friends,” he writes.

But beyond Tammet’s amazing linguistic accomplishments and his feats of memory and calculation, is his profound depth of insight and empathy. Like Temple Grandin, a woman with autism who has written about her life and story, Tammet seems to take pride in being able to show the rest of us the world that is hidden inside those with autism. Tammet's book will, no doubt, soon be regarded as equal to Grandin's works in importance for providing such an intimate and clear view of thought, language, understanding, and sensory issues related to autism.