Lancastrian memoirist and novelist Catherine Simpson reflects on raising a family where her eldest daughter Nina was diagnosed, aged ten, with Asperger’s. Reading about how Simpson prepped for motherhood (with Laura Ashley nursery curtains and neat shelves of Ladybird books) is a nostalgic trip down a lane she didn’t realise would lead her into anguish and appointments with the headmaster. Those sections where medical experts and school staff gaslit Simpson for years when she persistently flagged concerns are excruciating; anyone who has tried in vain to get social workers or health professionals onside will sympathise.

Simpson, raising her family in and around Edinburgh, was often blamed for her child’s behaviours and she looks back on some outmoded parenting advice from the 80s and 90s in horror. The bureaucracy of disability, the impact of autism on a sibling, family in-jokes, empathetic pals, the rollercoaster of exhaustion and guilt for the primary caregiver: Simpson covers it all. She writes with down-to-earth candour, still questioning herself now on many aspects of her mothering, when clearly a more devoted parent would be hard to come by.

The central narrative of Nina’s sensory sensitivities and agonising feeling of not fitting in sometimes gets buried in other stories. Simpson’s previous autobiographies One Body and When I Had A Little Sister respectively dealt with her breast cancer diagnosis and her sibling’s suicide. In Hold Fast, Simpson continues to explore her upbringing, wondering aloud if people-pleasing and perfectionism impacted her parenting. It’s all relatable, human stuff, and we follow her dogged quest to become a writer despite her carer duties.

But it’s page 142 before we actually get Nina’s autism diagnosis. Hold Fast feels like a few books rolled into one. Simpson’s journey through parenting an autistic child would be a very compelling and awareness-raising standalone story. Falling in love with her daughter’s idiosyncrasies, translating constantly between the neurodiverse and neurotypical worlds, struggling to find her own identity amongst it all; perhaps that complicated commingling of stories is parenthood in a nutshell.

Hold Fast: Motherhood, My Autistic Daughter And Me is published by Saraband on Thursday 14 August; main picture: Julia Boggio.