From the other side of autism

What makes Tammet's steel-trap mind all the more remarkable is that he's able to discuss the way it works. One of the world's 50 known living autistic savants, he is unique among that group in that he has the capacity to reflect on his gifts. Kim Peek, the inspiration for the film "Rain Man," is a more typical autistic savant: He has committed 9,000 books to memory yet is unable to take care of himself.

Indeed, Tammet is a one-of-a-kind wunderkind with the potential to illuminate at least some of the many mysteries about autism. It's for this reason that scientists in both his native England and the United States have studied his brain so extensively. Unfortunately, storytelling doesn't rank among Tammet's many gifts. His memoir "Born on a Blue Day" is a grab bag of missed opportunities.

The book opens on a promising note. Tammet explains his unusual relationship to the numerical world: "Scientists call my visual, emotional experience of numbers synesthesia, a rare neurological mixing of the senses. . . . Mine is an unusual and complex type, through which I see numbers as shapes, colors, textures and motions. The number 1, for example, is a brilliant and bright white, like someone shining a flashlight into my eyes. Five is a clap of thunder or the sound of waves crashing against rocks. Thirty-seven is lumpy like porridge, while 89 reminds me of falling snow."

This is all fascinating stuff, but that's about as close as Tammet gets to defining himself. There are few other places in the book where the reader gets a full sense of who he is and how he evolved from a toddler prone to banging his head against the wall to an adult with a thriving career and committed romantic relationship.

Tammet wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome -- a high-functioning form of autism -- until he was 25, but from the beginning it was clear that something was amiss. As a baby he wailed around the clock; as a toddler he favored solitude. Sensitive to noise, touch, and deviations in his routine, he had trouble with any kind of social interaction.