Posts tagged with “mental health”

16 January

The Secret Scriptures

07:44 AM
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One could be forgiven for thinking that this book might fall into the Dan Brown/Da Vinci code “genre” to go by the title, but you’d be wrong.  There is a narrative device of two journals which alternate and one of these is necessarily hidden away and secret.  Perhaps secret is the wrong word, but there is a big “secret” which is only revealed towards the end of the book.  It is hard for me to talk about plot specifics without revealing this secret without “spoiling” the plot.

I was really quite taken with the way this book covers the sweep of an entire century, yet does so in a very engaging way by literally covering the life story of a woman from the last century to this.  All this in the context of Ireland.  There always seem to be questions I am left asking myself after reading a book, and I think the more of them I have usually is a pretty reliable indicator as to how good the book is or at least how much it engaged me.

For this book one question was if Sebastian Barry were Irish and another was whether he started the book with the ending in mind and some sort of plot outline.  For the former a quick google has revealed that he was Dublin born and is indeed Irish, as I expected since the book is immersed in Irish culture and history which was one of the reasons I so enjoyed it.  This also enabled me to learn a lot of history and background both of the troubles and of the recent revelations of abuse cases endemic in Ireland and a few other island nations (such as the island of Jersey where a residential childrens’ facility apparently had many many historic abuse cases).

As to where he started his planning of the book - well Google is less revealing of course and we can likely only speculate.

But this does lead me to the last thing I am curious about, which is how many readers are surprised by the final “twist” to the plot.  As the interleaving narratives progress we are left wondering if they will overlap in any other way than their perspectives on Roseanne’s life (it is told in the first person from the beginning and in third person from the end).  The third person is not the narrator per se, but another character in the book.  I found this plot device immensely satisfying and it gave Mr Barry a lot of opportunity to show what a fine writer he is.

To conclude - thoroughly recommended!  And please please do leave a comment to let me know if you were totally surprised as you finished the book or if you, like me, had intimations as to what was to be revealed before it was!

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31 July

Quakers and cakes

05:59 AM
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Today yearly meeting decided on partnerships and I had the idea of trying to earn an extra crust by making “custom cakes” for couples especially but anyone in general under the franchise of tea and therapy, with food for your mood.  I have these great ideas *sigh* but I cannot decorate cakes for toffee so am I wasting my time?  In the context of the posting above this one I should involve this into a spiritual post on “Chuggie”, which was the childhood name for flapjack I remember from my first boyhood best friend’s family!

Another example of such an idea - you know the way drinking straws will always rise from a carbonated glass and invariably escape as you are nearing the destination?  Well it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a straw that will not do this and I reckon patenting that could make you a tidy sum.

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13 May

Poppy Shakespeare

06:21 AM
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I first read this book as a random find by a new author at my library when it had just been published in paperback, which must have been about two years ago.  Last night we discussed it at the library bok group.  I did not have especially good memories of the book so it came as a surprise when it was quite well received.

Undoubtedly the language takes a little getting used to because the narrator is “N” a user of the mental health system in more or less present day Britain.  I think there is one short chapter in which the phrase “Do you know what I’m saying?” crops up four times, for example!  There’s also an ample sprinkling of profanity which may offend the more prudish reader.  Beyond that there are a few devices the author employs which could annoy; I think every character seems to have some adornment to their name, like “middle class Michael”, “Slasher Sue” and so on.  The chapter structure is short and choppy and “N” is a little conversational, advising tht you can skip chapters if you have been to the daycentre, for example.

Although I didn’t have time to reread the book properly and frankly would not chose to do so I did have a quick scan and was surprised that these annoyances did not get in the way for me the second time around.  Perhaps they are things one gets used to?

During the book group I also learned that the author speaks from experience having spent ten years as a user of the health system.  Some elements ring true - the way a group of patients may form a collectve community for example.  Many elements are exagerated to comic effect, like the idea of “Mad Money”, an epithet for the benefits available to service users, for which it is required that one prove madnes to claim.  This sets up a reverse Catch 22 situtation for Poppy Shakespeare to prove she is mad, something that is played upon for most of the book and makes a plank for the plot.

Personally I could not help thinking the author was heavily influenced by Catch-22, One flew over the cuckoos nest, and Cold Comfort Farm.  The last is the most tentative, but there were elements of the writing which I found rang bells with my memories of Stella Gibbons work.  I have to be honest and say they are elements that do not endear the authors to me, but for all that I guess it’s still worth a read.  I cannot help feeling her ending is extremely dark and bleak and I’m not sure why - at the book group we wondered if it might be because the book is dedicated to someone who was a user of the system for whom things did not go well.  That would not surprise me but it does depress me

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