An unusually humorous and candid memoir of growing up adopted, searching for and finding the birth mother and dealing with the psychological trauma associated with this adoption. Beginning on a beach in Cornwall and ending when Mulholland's adoptive parents and birth mother join him in a rehab clinic in the Arizona desert, Special & Odd constantly questions the extent to which his personality has been formed by adoption into a wealthy upper middle class family. Does his adoptive status really influence his behaviour and decisions? Is he really special and odd?