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Four Years of Bedlamide:

Name: Four Years of Bedlamide:
Author: Max Malady
ISBN: 978-1507650523

MY DIVORCE FROM A SCHIZOPHRENIC

by Max Malady ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 25, 2015

Raw yet gripping exploration of mental illness.

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In this debut novel, Harry Taylor recounts his mistaken marriage to a schizophrenic, detailing her “Voice” and mercenary, mentally unstable family.

Harry, who was in between college and law school in 1969, met younger Terri through a cousin and married her in his middle age. She admitted to having mental issues, but Harry was assured by her doctor that these were controlled by medication; thus, as expressed in the novel’s first chapter heading, “The Prognosis Is Good.” Harry soon found out this was a misdiagnosis, since Terri became hostile about having sex, intensely concerned about his money, and, worst of all, obsessive in her desire to kill her parents, particularly her mother, from whom she likely inherited her mental illness. Harry began to realize that Terri was in full sway to what she described as her “Voice.” His first-person account provides a picture of what these racing thoughts were like and how he initially wanted to help Terri but soon felt helpless and then resolved upon divorce. He ended up battling Terri’s parents in court proceedings since they had welcomed him taking over Terri’s medical costs and pushed for a big settlement. He finally extricated himself but is now lonely and shell-shocked by the experience. Terri and her family met even more tragic ends. Author Malady seems very likely to be a pseudonym for someone who has confronted similar circumstances. Regardless, the author captures the horror and pain of such a predicament. The “Voice” chapters are particularly striking, engendering surprising sympathy for the troublesome Terri. The narrative is undercut a bit by its rambling style, which has some digressive and seemingly nonchronological sequences, as well as its dwelling on money grievances; both issues dilute the work’s larger, more important discussion about handling mental illness. Still, this account offers plenty of fascinating documentarylike moments, not least of which is the author’s intriguing assertion that “the source of religious inspiration might be mental illness.”

Raw yet gripping exploration of mental illness.

Pub Date: March 25, 2015

ISBN: 978-1507650523

Page Count: 110

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: May 8, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.