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This book gave me a panic attack. It hit a little close to home and there were so many scenes that resonated with me. I think she is strong for putting this out there. This is the true face of mental illness. This is what it feels like, what it's like to live with, what it's like to find out that all your worst fears about yourself are true, what it feels like to start fighting it, and living with the knowledge that it will never leave you.
I read an uncorrected proof (thank you Harper Perennial!!!) So there were a few typos and repetition of paragraphs. Overall her prose flows in a very stream of consciousness kind of way. I like it. It gives the impression that we are there with her, in her mind, experiencing the parts of her life she has chosen to share with us. However, that gets very real, and very stressful. We are sucked into her mind, her experience of this illness, and how terrifying it can be. It gave me a panic attack. Friendly trigger warning.
The book jumps around in a chronological-ish order though her memories. From Her childhood and family anecdotes, to school, to America and new family, through her relationships, and an ever growing presence of her mental illness until it finally takes over her life, and then the aftermath.
The ending seemed a bit rushed. After her stay in the mental ward she stops giving us concrete times and instead just rushes through some major life events. Peter dies (who is peter? I don't know.) and she has a 'benign growth' in her lady parts that morphs from, what my first impression was, cancer, to a baby? Then, suddenly we are in her new life with her child and mental illness. It doesn't cover work, or family relationships/reactions to the illness in an ongoing way, post diagnosis.
What I liked most about this book is that it didn't have a 'happy ending'. Mental illness isn't something you cure. It's something you live with, and she gives us that ending. The 'living-with-it' ending. I have struggled with mental illness too, and I appreciate the realness of this ending.