What would you think of yourself from 29 years ago? Author Adam Oster takes a novel approach to the concept of personal history in his recently released book, Playing Human: Volume One: Fall 1995. Originally released in serialized format on Kindle, Playing Human is Oster’s look back at his life at age 15 after moving halfway across the country from South Carolina to Eau Claire to enroll at Messiah Evangelical High School and live in its on-campus dormitories. A humorous, self-reflective coming-of-age story, it also provides a look at masking autism as a child.

“I’d never considered I might be autistic until a therapist friend of mine read a few chapters and asked,” Oster said.

Playing Human employs some compelling techniques to tell its narrative. As a genre, autobiographical stories are largely told in a first-person perspective. Instead, Oster creates a clear line of separation between 1995 Adam and the storyteller of the book by telling it in third-person (referring to the character as “Adam” and “he” rather than as “I”) and by using footnotes.

“The footnotes were inspired by Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ novels," Oster said. “They’re used to create some quick, fun, quips as we reflect on 1995 Adam, but also to make some dissonance between what he believes to be true, and what the narrator now understands.”