mental illness

Crazy: Compelling and Hopeful

| Tasha

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Crazy by Han Nolan

Jason is trying his best to cope.  His mother died of a sudden stroke, leaving him caring for his mentally-ill father.  With no money coming in, Jason struggles to feed them both and heat the house.  There is no time for caring for the house itself or even for himself.  Jason has no friends and is spending a lot of time with the imaginary friends in his head.  He can’t tell anyone about them though, because he’s afraid that they are proof that he is crazy like his father.  He is also very frightened that if anyone finds out his father’s condition, they will put him away and Jason will have no one.  After another run-in with a teacher, Jason is required to spend his lunches with the school’s counselor and a small group of students.  Jason finds himself slowly opening up to them, and even allowing them to help him when his father disappears one wintery night.  But his fears may not have been unjustified as Jason’s carefully constructed world falls apart around him.  Written with great humor and warmth, this is a compelling story about a boy struggling under the tremendous weight of mental illness.

Nolan writes in punchy sentences that carry so much more emotion than one might expect.  Jason’s imaginary friends add a large amount of humor to the book, despite the fact that they may be a symptom of mental illness.  Readers will related to Jason as a character, understand his motivations immediately.  He is a likeable and believable protagonist who has survived amazingly well.  The three friends he makes are also very interesting characters, a girl dealing with her mother dying, a boy trying to handle his parent’s brutal divorce, and another boy dealing with a parent’s addiction.  Each gives readers a glimpse of their own situation.  Nolan nicely equates mental illness with other issues, exposing what can be considered a shameful secret alongside those that are more accepted in our society.

I don’t want to give much of the story away, but Nolan deals very well with the aid that Jason receives both at school and outside of school.  This book offers a view of the system that is often lacking: it is a system with rules but that can also work to remove a teen from an impossible situation into a much improved one.  She offers hope here.  Both a hope for true friends and a hope for family.

Highly recommended, this is a book of despair and hope.  Pair this with another great read about parental mental illness: A Blue So Dark.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from NetGalley digital galley.  Read on the iPad.

Also reviewed by:

How I Made It to Eighteen

| Tasha

How I Made It to Eighteen: a mostly true story by Tracy White

Based on the author’s experiences, this book takes a straight-on look at depression and self-destruction.  Seventeen-year-old Stacy Black checked herself into a mental hospital to help deal with her anger and depression.  She had just put her fist through a glass window.  Stacy hated the hospital but knew that she had to be there to survive, so she stayed.  As she spent time there, she developed new friends who helped her in her recovery and in being honest with herself.  Told in graphic novel format that is more like a journal than manga, this book is honest, blunt and intelligent.  Teen readers will easily see themselves in Stacy whether they are struggling with similar issues or not.

This book appears to be a regular novel until you open it and see all of the illustrations.  Done in line drawings, the illustrations are quirky and have the unedited feel of a real journal.  Readers get to know Stacy as well as her friends both in the hospital and from outside.  This perspective shift, done at the end of each chapter is a welcome view of how outsiders view a teen who enters a hospital.  While they express confusion and concern, all of them realize that it was a necessary step.  It is a brilliant and subtle way to tell teens that they will not be vilified if they get the help they need.

Though heavily illustrated, White’s writing is also a large part of the story.  Stacy is a sarcastic and caustic character.  Readers will realize immediately that she is putting on a front, but it takes time for readers and Stacy to acknowledge what exactly has brought her to the hospital and to this place in her life.  The slow unveiling of the basis of her problems mirrors the steps in her counseling.  This makes the entire book feel organic and honest.

A book that teens will enjoy and relate to, this graphic novel will appeal to a much broader audience than graphic novel readers.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from copy received from Roaring Brook Press.

Also reviewed by:

A Blue So Dark

| Tasha

A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler

Aura has a secret that is getting harder and harder to keep.  Her mother is suffering from schizophrenia and has become Aura’s sole responsibility now that her father has remarried and started a new family.  Aura must make sure her mother goes to job as an art teacher and tries to monitor her through the window.  But her mother is slipping further and further away, into her own world of delusions, fear and suspicion.  As if that isn’t complicated enough, Aura has other personal issues.  Her best friend just had a baby and can’t be as supportive as she once was.  She has fallen for a skateboarding boy but can’t seem to put two words together around him.  To top it all off, she has started to work for her grandmother, who doesn’t know who Aura is.  As Aura tries to save and protect everyone around her, who is saving her?

This book is an honest and brutal portrayal of mental illness and the toll it takes upon the caregiver, in this case a teen who just wants to be normal.  A large piece of the tension here is the relationship between mother and daughter, which teeters, tips and overturns.  There is such a sense of betrayal and loss in their relationship, powerfully combined with dread and fear.  Aura sees herself in her mother’s illness, certain that she too will eventually succumb to schizophrenia.  She believes it is tied to the artistic talent that both she and her mother have, so she tries to turn her back on art.

Aura is a well-drawn protagonist trying to cope with an impossible situation and fighting to keep up the pretense that nothing is wrong.  She is by turns in denial about the situation and drowning in it.  She is a strong, amazing character who is resilient and refuses to stop fighting for her mother and herself. 

Highly recommended, this book is dark, deep and haunting.  It speaks from the heart about matters that are too often hidden or whispered about.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from copy received from Flux.

Holly Schindler has done several blog interviews: Cynsations, Bildungsroman and Bart’s Bookshelf.