A novel about Charlie, neurodivergent, preoccupied with numbers, and desperately trying to solve for love.
Growing up on an isolated farm, Charlie is clearly different. He can never make sense of what anyone else is thinking or feeling, and finds solace in the infinitely fascinating world of numbers.
Many years later Charlie sees a phone number pop up on his call display for the first time in ten years, belonging to a woman he assumed dead. On the verge of another breakdown, he searches the streets of Montreal for a lost love — forced to face a past that he had desperately tried to forget.
With magnetic prose that positively vibrates with energy, Bernice Friesen brilliantly takes us into the mind of a captivating, unforgettable character. Universal Disorder is an extraordinary novel about the human psyche and the imperfect, disordered ways that we love each other.