MOMMA MAY BE MAD

Neville reflects on her life and mental illness in this memoir.

“Electric Shock Treatments erased years of my linear memory,” writes the author in the book’s opening lines, adding that her unreliable reminiscence is a “chaotic approximation” of an incomplete, “jerry-rigged record” (the mercurial quality of the text reflects her battle with bipolar disorder). While the basic elements of a memoir are present—the narrative covers the author’s evolution from an angsty teenager to a successful writer, professor of English, and Fulbright Scholar—what stands out is Neville’s commentary on and exploration of common human experiences. The opening essay, for instance, grapples with the ephemeral nature of memory itself, blending the author’s own medically assisted efforts to remember the past with neuroscience’s scene construction theory and the broader implications of human autonoetic consciousness. The book’s most powerful sections survey the deeply personal aspects of Neville’s life, from the complicated postpartum relationship with her then-husband (who is simply referred to as “X”) to suicidal ideations to the ways in which “bipolar’s annihilating death grip” affects her self-perception (“A Facebook post on one of my smug feel-good-recovery days,” she notes, reads like “sound-bite profundity” on a down day). Neville has an eclectic, genre-defying writing style—an accomplished poet and short-story writer, she pushes the boundaries and rules of grammar (reflecting on the nature of memory, she writes, “The self becomes erratic and unstable: no I, just iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…”). The memoir eschews chronological organization—the narrative can traverse dozens of topics in just a handful of pages. A trip to Flannery O’Connor’s home, for instance, triggers recollections of the author’s Catholic upbringing, her experiences with exorcisms, and her self-diagnosis of subclinical graphomania in the course of four pages. While sometimes disorienting, this approach (which also interrupts the text with the occasional poem or reproduction of a journal entry) effectively allows readers into Neville’s brilliant, if often tortured, mind.

An unusually intriguing and poignant memoir.