The Outsider
Navigating life as an autistic person, Freddy fixates on the mysterious disappearance of his mother when he was a child.
July 29th, 2026
Aaron Cully Drake is a former newspaper reporter and editor.
“Freddy’s voice is spot-on—slightly self-deprecating and in equal parts awe and confusion as he interacts with a world whose social codes he, as an autistic person, doesn’t fully comprehend. ‘I’m an acquired taste, like fine wine, or olives, even,’ he says.”
Review by Susan Sanford Blades
Sometime during the 6th century BC, Greek philosopher Heraclitus pronounced “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” This sentiment has been adapted into present-day mental health mantras such as “The only constant is change.” Coquitlam-based author Aaron Cully Drake embraces both consistency and change in his second novel, When the World Was Twice as Big (Nightwood $23.95). With this book, he steps into the same river, so to speak, that he swam in with his first novel, Do You Think This is Strange? (Brindle & Glass, 2017) by revisiting his debut’s main character, Freddy, his father, Bill and his best friend, Saskia. The book flows over the same territory as the author’s debut, but eddies around different questions of obsession, growth, love and letting go.
Do You Think This is Strange? was an award-winning coming-of-age story that focussed on Freddy’s autism, his mother’s disappearance and his friendship with Saskia. When the World Was Twice as Big is also a bildungsroman that centres on the same things, though, while Cully Drake’s debut took place during Freddy’s final year of high school, this latest novel begins in high school but expands into Freddy’s adult life. The book follows Freddy through finishing high school, tree planting in the remote Vancouver Island village of Port Alice and working as a cook at a diner in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Throughout, Freddy attempts to connect with his first love and childhood friend Saskia, ignores his father’s efforts to connect with him, all the while fixated on the murky circumstances surrounding his mother’s disappearance when he was a child.
The book begins a bit disjointedly, told in vignettes. We seem to be at a certain moment, after Freddy’s high school graduation party, looking back, but the writing switches between past and present tense and, at first, it was hard to parse a fictive present in which to ground myself as a reader. The first chapters seemed like a clouded window Freddy was cleaning for us in slow, meandering circles. This could be a function of this second novel being a sequel of sorts to the first.
After Freddy’s high school graduation, however, the book continues on a chronological timeline with a clear narrative arc and becomes much more readable. Cully Drake’s writing is concise and humorous, and Freddy’s voice is spot-on—slightly self-deprecating and in equal parts awe and confusion as he interacts with a world whose social codes he, as an autistic person, doesn’t fully comprehend. “I’m an acquired taste, like fine wine, or olives, even,” Freddy says. And, “[a]nyone awkward in conversation is family.” This book doesn’t dwell on his autism, however; it circles around questions of love—how to accept it, nurture it, how it endures, the many shapes it takes and how letting go might be more important than hanging on.
As in Cully Drake’s first novel, Freddy is consumed with his mother’s disappearance and any new information that surfaces about this mystery. It seems a reasonable thing to obsess over, so Saskia and Bill’s indifference to Freddy’s persistent questions about his mother seemed baffling at best, insensitive at worst. “Is it really this painful for you?” Bill asks. And Saskia tells Freddy, “It shouldn’t bother you.”
Throughout, Freddy’s social awkwardness is well portrayed with empathy and humour. The only small talk he can come up with is to ask after someone’s health, and there are several hilarious sections where Freddy does so in the most inappropriate moments, for instance, during a fight with Saska over text. “Make small talk. Ok. On it,” he thinks to himself, then texts: “How is your health?” Saskia’s response: “Are you seven years old?” I also appreciated Freddy’s ongoing list of Favourite Things. “My sixth Favourite Thing. The kiss that night.”
The dialogue, both spoken and in text messages that Freddy and Saskia send to one another, does what dialogue should do—it’s short and snappy, with the perfect amounts of misunderstandings and tension. And the descriptions are both beautifully written and serve to give the reader insight into mood and character such as when Freddy feels alienated at his high school graduation party: “This party like it was a galaxy, each of us clustered together and darkness everywhere else,” Freddy thinks to himself. Or, in the bush on Vancouver Island, where the truck-driving residents “ha[ve] a dent in the panel of their soul[s].”
Freddy is an endearing and vulnerable character that any reader would want to follow through a number of lives. Through his “outsider’s” observations of the world around him, we gain great insight into what to let go and what is truly important to hang on to.
Susan Sanford Blades’ debut novel, Fake It So Real, won the 2021 ReLit Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her second novel, Girl on Paper, will be published by Nightwood Editions in spring, 2027.
Leave a Reply