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EVERYTHING IS FINE

A MEMOIR

Candid and carefully argued, Granata’s memoir helps us better understand the horrors of mental illness.

Probing memoir of a family tragedy and the search for explanations.

Granata was 27 when his brother, Tim, “convinced that the woman who made him peanut butter sandwiches when he was a grass-stained child was the source of his constant pain,” killed his mother. Ultimately, the court declared his brother to be not guilty “by reason of mental disease or defect….Defect, like there was a flaw in Tim’s design, an error buried in the schematic for his brain.” Arriving at that decision—and Granata’s acceptance of it—involved developing a more granular understanding of schizophrenia and its effects than most of us carry in our minds. A critical component is anosognosia, a neurological effect that prevents a mentally ill person from recognizing the illness and substitutes for clinical terms something that, in the brother’s case, approached a language of the hero quest: “spiritual warfare, the wrong path, demonic possession.” About 300 mothers are killed by their children in the U.S. each year, and about two-thirds of those victims are slain by children who suffer from untreated mental illness—the key term being untreated. “Is there a link between untreated serious mental illness and violence against self or others? All of my language here needs to be clear, every word,” writes the author. One of the problems is that sufferers often fail to take their medication. Confined to a Connecticut mental hospital for “a period that would likely span decades” after being found not guilty, Tim adopted a voluntary regimen of medication that has enabled him to see his actions differently and take responsibility for the act. Granata records his own sometimes discomfiting reactions to events, such as the impulse to turn his mother into a martyr and figuring out how to keep in balance the contradictory repulsion for and love for a desperately ill brother.

Candid and carefully argued, Granata’s memoir helps us better understand the horrors of mental illness.

Pub Date: April 13, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-982133-44-3

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021

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I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED

The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.

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The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.

In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.

The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.

Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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