Up All Night not only grips readers in unrelenting humor, but it offers a fresh voice embracing
readers with graphic injuries, tender recollections, big surprises, and love. Posing nuanced
psychological questions while never losing its heart, Up All Night traces the challenges of living
with undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome before the social disorder became known in 1992.
The memoir recaptures the integration of two families—Trout and Caspers—while showing
how impactful a married couple can be despite their incapacity to see the obvious. Richie Trout
was the boy who’d never have a girlfriend, said classmate Michelle West, whose rule as one of
the three queens in Mr. Kucera’s sixth-grade class intimidated every male student. Almost every
chapter is hysterical. Some are poignant. The tale also offers a warning to young people who
recently suffered the loss of a first love—or who may face that future trauma.
With a modest yet entertaining, action-packed style enhanced by an Aspie’s acute long-term
memory, Trout delves into vivid, cringe-worthy, and demoralizing episodes. Anyone with fond
memories of the years from grade school to college and adulthood will rejoice. Trout’s move
to Hobbs, New Mexico, or Opposite Land, nicknamed for its stark differences from Chicago,
becomes his springboard to social skills, empathy, and fatherhood. Up All Night circles back to
sixth grade in the final chapters when Trout confronts lingering a boogeyman.
