Alison Strange was a clever girl of whom it was known by her mother, her grandfather, and her teachers that she could not face tests of knowledge. Her mother had been told by psychologists that she would never go to university because the business of analyzing what lecturers and tutors meant by their instructions would utterly panic and exhaust her, and basically send her into fits of Tourette’s, into writhings and repeated meaningless sounds like begging. Tourette’s was frequently found in autism cases, a doctor had said. Alison could learn anything if she was interested, but not under any
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