Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Behind These Hands
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.lindavigenphillips.com/
CITY: Charlotte
STATE: NC
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2013076087
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2013076087
HEADING: Phillips, Linda Vigen
000 00342cz a2200121n 450
001 9439433
005 20131230184039.0
008 131230n| azannaabn |n aaa
010 __ |a n 2013076087
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC |e rda
100 1_ |a Phillips, Linda Vigen
670 __ |a Crazy, 2014: |b ECIP t.p. (Linda Phillips) data sheet (Linda Vigen Phillips)
953 __ |a xk09
PERSONAL
Married; husband’s name Wendell; children: two (twins).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Speaker, workshop teacher, and author. Worked previously as a teacher.
AVOCATIONS:Porch sitting with her husband, Charlotte greenway bike rides, visiting with her grandchildren, realistic fiction, poetry.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Prior to beginning her writing career, Linda Vigen Phillips served as a teacher, working with both children and differently-abled adults. Now that she has retired, she devotes her time to leading workshops and publishing her own books. Her preferred genres are realism and poetry.
Crazy
Crazy is Phillips’s literary debut. The novel is partly based on some of her own experiences growing up, and focuses on a teenage protagonist by the name of Laura. The book is written exclusively in verse form. While Laura is only in her second year of high school, her life is fraught with difficult circumstances, the most pressing of which is the declining mental health of her mother. What’s worse is the rest of her family tries only to shield Laura from the truth regarding her mother’s illness, leading her to grapple with self-blame and fear. She manages to find solace by taking a part-time job that allows her to express herself creatively.
Booklist reviewer Gail Bush wrote that the book “will resonate with teens who understand the desire to protect themselves from their families’ inner truths.” A writer in an issue of Kirkus Reviews stated: “[T]his is worth a read for the text’s vivid link between emotions and fine art.” A writer on the Annalyze blog felt the book “was almost a perfect novel containing the themes of mental illness, tolerance, and family love.” She added: “I thoroughly enjoyed CRAZY and know that I will be thinking about Laura and her family for a long while.” On the WNC Woman Magazine website, one reviewer stated: “The story is all the more effective for being written in free verse with jagged edges reflecting Laura’s emotional journey.” She went on to say: “That a story about a suicidal teenager like Laura will be dark is a certainty, but Phillips’ bright and heartening images make despair optional.” Kid Lit Reviews contributor Sue Morris remarked: “Crazy drew me into the story immediately with the powerful writing.” She added: “The author does a great job leading the reader down the path she wants them to walk.” On the EerdWord blog, Rachel Bomberger wrote: “Maybe though, just maybe, a beautiful, powerful book like Crazy will make the stories a little easier to tell — and the truth about mental illness a little easier to face.”
Behind These Hands
Behind These Hands possesses a similar format to Crazy. At the start of the novel, Claire Fairchild is in the midst of preparing for one of the most momentous events of her life. She is due to perform at a music contest with a grand prize capable of granting her the jump start she needs to further her creative ambitions. Yet it isn’t long before Claire and her family receive traumatic news. Claire’s brothers both develop Batten Disease, a condition that is sure to prove fatal for both boys. Claire struggles to cope with this news and what it means, and her passion toward music dwindles as a result. She falls into a depression over the tremendous changes erupting within her life and no longer sees the point in pursuing her musical dreams. Yet those close to her may be able to help her regain her ambition and find a reason to continue playing.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor expressed that Behind These Hands “brings awareness with sensitivity and grace to a rare, always fatal disease.” Voice of Youth Advocates reviewer Angie Jameson suggested: “Ending with a hopeful tone, this special interest title should be purchased for school and library shelves for pleasure reading.” On the Foreword Reviews website, Camille-Yvette Welsch remarked that the book “can help teachers and students alike to understand how young people weather and grow from challenging mental and physical diagnoses.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 2014, Gail Bush, review of Crazy, p. 44.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2014, review of Crazy; June 1, 2018, review of Behind These Hands.
Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 2018, Angie Jameson, review of Behind These Hands, p. 62.
ONLINE
Annalyze, https://annalyzebooks.wordpress.com/ (June 7, 2016), review of Crazy.
EerdWord, https://eerdword.com/ (July 29, 2014), Rachel Bomberger, review of Crazy.
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (July 1, 2018), Camille-Yvette Welsch, review of Behind These Hands.
Kid Lit Reviews, https://kid-lit-reviews.com/ (June 1, 2015), Sue Morris, review of Crazy.
Linda Vigen Phillips website, http://www.lindavigenphillips.com/ (October 30, 2018), author profile.
WNC Woman Magazine, https://wncwoman.com/ (November 1, 2016), review of Crazy.
ABOUT LINDA
Short story
Linda Vigen Phillips, a retired teacher, is passionate about poetry and realistic fiction. Her first novel in verse,Crazy,(Eerdmans/2014) is loosely based on her experience with mental illness in her family. It has provided an inroad into mental health advocacy, through which Linda has helped found Providence Place, a drop-in center for persons with mental illness and their families in Charlotte. Her second novel, Behind These Hands,(Light Messages/2018) addresses a rare childhood disease called Batten that struck three students attending schools where Linda taught. Linda offers writing workshops and spends time speaking and teaching about the importance of bringing these mental and physical issues into public awareness. In her spare time, she finds every opportunity to visit her grandkids, ride her bike on a Charlotte greenway, or sit on her porch with her husband and watch the grass grow.
Long story
Linda Vigen Phillips grew up in a small, isolated mill town in the mountains of rural Oregon. After graduating from the University of Oregon in Sociology, she and her best friend drove across the country to see what was on the other side of those Rocky Mountains. Linda spent several years working with adventitiously blind adults through the New York Association for the Blind, and met her husband, Wendell, an Episcopal minister. Their ministry has taken them around the country, finally settling in Charlotte, NC for the past 30 years.
Linda has been writing in journals since grade school, and acquired a love of poetry from both parents who exchanged love letters littered with poems during WWII. As a young married mother of twins, and a student returning to earn a teaching certificate, Linda created a plethora of poems that served as a healing process to childhood memories. The widely acclaimed Young Adult verse novel, Crazy, was born out of what began as a collection of poems written largely as a cathartic exercise.
When Linda met three students diagnosed with a devastating neurodegenerative disease in the same town, she was compelled to write another fictional story in verse based on fact, and Behind These Hands was born. Linda loves to speak to students and adults, offering workshops and advocating for better mental health and rare childhood disease awareness. In her spare time, she visits her grandkids, rides her bike on the Charlotte greenways, or sits on her porch with her husband and watches the grass grow.
Print Marked Items
Phillips, Linda Vigen: BEHIND THESE
HANDS
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Phillips, Linda Vigen BEHIND THESE HANDS Light Messages (Young Adult Fiction) $16.99 7, 17 ISBN:
978-1-61153-259-3
When devastating news hits, a 14-year-old piano prodigy questions her place in her family and the world in
this novel in verse.
Claire Fairchild was born to make music and has been preparing for an elite competition that could have a
tremendous impact on her future. When both of her little brothers, Trent, 6, and Davy, 7, are diagnosed with
Batten disease, a rare, incurable illness that leads to physical and mental deterioration and then death,
Claire's carefully outlined world collapses: "Batten has rearranged our family / like pieces of familiar
furniture / placed awkwardly in a new setting." Music is no longer important: "I don't feel the music in me at
all. / It feels dead." She feels "dirty inside" for worrying about the impact this news has on her competition
prep. How can she continue to make music when her brothers are dying? With the support of her friends,
Juan and Mia, Claire finds hope--not that her brothers will live, but that she can use her music to celebrate
their lives, no matter how brief. Free verse evokes the myriad emotions brought up by the story's numerous
well-balanced themes. The result is a richly woven, unforgettable symphony of feelings and words. Claire
and her family are white, as is Mia; Juan is Cuban.
Brings awareness with sensitivity and grace to a rare, always fatal disease. (author's note) (Fiction. 12-17)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Phillips, Linda Vigen: BEHIND THESE HANDS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723337/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=979a8fe2.
Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723337
Phillips, Linda Vigen. Behind These
Hands
Angie Jameson
Voice of Youth Advocates.
41.2 (June 2018): p62.
COPYRIGHT 2018 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
Phillips, Linda Vigen. Behind These Hands. Light Messages, July 2018. 300p. $16.99 Trade pb. 987-1-
61153-259-3.
3Q * 3P * J * S
Fourteen-year-old Claire Fairchilds spends most of her time practicing piano and crushing on her best
friend, Juan, until the possibility of Batten disease (a fatal neurological disease preventing the body's cells
from eliminating wastes) tears through her home. Unsure of whether or not Batten disease will affect her,
Claire perseveres through a prestigious music competition with the support of her friend and toughest
opponent: Juan. When her two younger brothers are officially diagnosed, Claire must find a way to cope her
new reality. Unable to grasp the idea of happiness in her new world, Claire works to develop a plan to
celebrate the time her brothers have left while making a difference for others coping with Batten disease.
Told in verse, Behind These Hands tells Claire's coming-of-age story of heartache, guilt, and acceptance.
Phillips encourages her readers to embrace family support and accept life as a celebration whenever
possible. The verse format works well in some sections of the book, as the short lines of verse create an
uneasy, unsettling tone while Claire and her family await the blood work results. Much of the text, however,
does not read as verse and would be better formatted as prose. Additionally, today's teen readers might not
recognize many of the allusions included in this text. Ending with a hopeful tone, this special interest title
should be purchased for school and library shelves for pleasure reading--Angie Jameson.
Behind These Hands is an inspiring story that follows a young teen through the struggles of moving, music,
and family hardships using verse format. This story is wonderful; however, its plotline only appeals to a
select audience: musicians. The verse sometimes breaks up the story in a way that makes it feel forced and
awkward. 3Q, 2P.
--Nadia McGinnis, Teen Reviewer.
Told in prose, Behind These Hands follows the life of fourteen-year-old Claire Fairchild, a prodigious
pianist. After her younger brothers are diagnosed with Batten disease, Claire must learn to adapt and
embrace her family's difficult new reality. While Phillips's use of verse perfectly illustrates the beauty of
Claire's piano playing, it often feels forced during moments of dialogue or plot development, weakening the
story's clarity. 2Q, 2P. --Maggie Mills, Teen Reviewer.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Jameson, Angie. "Phillips, Linda Vigen. Behind These Hands." Voice of Youth Advocates, June 2018, p. 62.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A545022915/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8e5811ca. Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A545022915
Crazy
Gail Bush
Booklist.
111.4 (Oct. 15, 2014): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Crazy. By Linda Vigen Phillips. Oct. 2014.320p. Eerdmans, paper, $9 (9780802854377). Gr. 8-12.
Laura is a sophomore whose life is a balancing act between the hardships of a mother with manic depression
(bipolar disorder) and the gifts of her own abundant artistic talent and a genuine best friend. Dedicated "to
my mother, whose fault it never was, and to my sister, my soul mate in survival," Phillips' novel in verse
draws from personal experience and paints a painful tableau of family life. Set in the early 1960s, Crazy
places the approach to mental illness firmly back half a century. Laura tells her friends that her mother has a
blood disease to shield the family from the certain stigma. A sympathetic but much older sister, a struggling
father, an encouraging art teacher, religious influences, and the promise of a boyfriend complete Laura's
insular world until she meets a stranger, Mrs. Boucher, who offers an oasis in her gift shop. With gentle
guidance, in the back of the store, Laura forms clay figurines, which helps her to work herself through her
challenges. Phillips' accessibly written chronicle will resonate with teens who understand the desire to
protect themselves from their families' inner truths. --Gail Bush
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bush, Gail. "Crazy." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2014, p. 44. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A388966032/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=007a48ea.
Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A388966032
Phillips, Linda Vigen: CRAZY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Phillips, Linda Vigen CRAZY Eerdmans (Children's Fiction) $9.00 10, 20 ISBN: 978-0-8028-5437-7
In this debut verse novel, a teen artist worries that she's triggered her mother's mental illness and that she'll
get it too. Laura's art teacher says she could be as good as van Gogh. Her mother used to paint and accepts
Laura's invitation to start again, but Mama quickly shifts from depression to "constantly moving / fidgeting /
pacing" and even seeing people who aren't there. Laura thinks she's responsible for Mama's nervous
breakdown--which requires hospitalization and shock therapy--and that she herself had better stop painting
or she'll have one too: "If I let go for a second, / the anxiety brimming below the surface / will pull me
down, / and I will drown / in a Jackson Pollock frenzy / of disorganized splatters." Given the refusal of her
father and other relatives to discuss mental illness, it's reasonable that Laura connects it with art. Less
believable is the ending, where the text supports Laura's hopefulness after a doctor says she'll probably be
fine, despite evidence to the contrary. Phillips' free verse is serviceable, though the line breaks often feel
arbitrary. Beatles references and the Kennedy assassination ground the 1963-1964 setting.While the
optimistic assertion about Laura's mental health seems dismayingly incomplete, this is worth a read for the
text's vivid link between emotions and fine art. (afterword) (Historical verse fiction. 13-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Phillips, Linda Vigen: CRAZY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2014. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A380746441/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5f92ef3d.
Accessed 19 Oct. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A380746441
When a member of her family receives a terminal diagnosis, fourteen-year-old Claire Fairchild suddenly questions her every action, wondering what remains important in the face of the challenge. This novel written in verse sticks close to Claire’s heartache as she navigates not only her own reaction to the news but the reactions of her family and friends. This is a compelling story in whose heroine other struggling teens might see themselves.
Claire is a music prodigy. She spends hours at the piano, listening for the conversation that occurs between her hands and the instrument. She shares this passion for music with her longtime best friend, Juan, against whom she is competing for a scholarship based on their own compositions.
When her younger brother receives a diagnosis of Batten disease, Claire struggles to find a way back into her own life that feels significant. Shocked and terrified, she yearns to celebrate her brother’s life and make her own worthwhile.
Short, targeted scenes and ruminations keep close to the emotional turmoil Claire experiences. Her voice is young and authentic, paying close attention to her friendships and relationships. As her parents struggle to help their children, Claire finds her family relationships changing; each person must determine how to renegotiate their connections. Here it is clear how a severe diagnosis guts not only patients but their families too.
Still, Claire finds a way to bring hope to the story. Written to help young adults and their families handle mental and physical health challenges, her story speaks to an often forgotten population and does so without exploiting the situation for melodrama. It can help teachers and students alike to understand how young people weather and grow from challenging mental and physical diagnoses.
A thought-provoking story told in verse, CRAZY by Linda Vigen Phillips is a YA novel set in the 1960’s. CRAZY follows its protagonist Laura as she tries to balance her typical life at school with her secretly dysfunctional life at home. Laura’s home life revolves around her mentally ill mother, and Laura worries because “I must have her genes, and I know from biology that those genes are sitting there inside me ready to go haywire just like hers.” (Pg. 137-138)
CRAZY does not shy away from the difficult issues revolving around mental illness, but embraces them in a moving and informative story. Due to the severe stigma regarding mental illness at the time, Laura’s mother’s illness is kept a secret from others and is unacknowledged by the family. Not only that, but Laura’s mother does not receive the treatment she needs until after she has a particularly bad manic episode, scaring her husband into action. CRAZY also brings to light the flaws of the medical practices for mental illness during the time, such as the memory loss from shock treatments and the foggy haze of over medicating.
Even though today is nowhere near as bad as it was during the 1960’s, mental health care and societal attitudes are still not what they should be. Insurance refuses to pay for a good deal of treatment, and there are still those who look down at people for something they can’t help any more than someone can help having cancer. CRAZY not only shows its readers the flaws of history, but illuminates what we still need to improve upon today. As someone with OCD and depression, this is a message that I not only relate to, but thoroughly appreciate.
Another important theme in CRAZY is how mental health not only affects the ill person, but all of their loved ones as well. Laura is often lost and in pain because of her mother’s illness and feels she has no one to turn to. As the story progress, Laura loses her passion for painting and finds herself contemplating suicide. While reading the novel, I felt deep sympathy for Laura. And as I turned each page, I hoped that she would find happiness within herself despite her difficult home life.
By the end of CRAZY, Laura finally comes to terms with her mother’s illness and even forces her family to acknowledge it. She learns that she cannot control her own mind any more than her mother can, and let’s go of the fear that she will become crazy like her mother with the help of her mother’s kind doctor. “You’ve been through a lot for your years. Make it work for you going forward. Keep asking questions, demanding answers, and calling the beast by the name.” (Pg. 306) In the final scene of the novel, Laura shares a heart-felt moment with her mother in which she forgives her for the effect her illness has had on her life.
CRAZY was almost a perfect novel containing the themes of mental illness, tolerance, and family love. Since I am not a big fan of poetry, I didn’t like that it was written in verse. At times I found the lines of verse jolting me out of a moving section of the story. However, if you are a fan of poetry, this probably won’t be a negative aspect for you. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed CRAZY and know that I will be thinking about Laura and her family for a long while.
By 1963, the year Crazy opens, “crazy” women were no longer committed to mental asylums and forgotten, but the stigma remained. (Until terms such as “mental illness” and “bipolar” emerged in the late sixties, “crazy” included all forms of mental health problems.) In her free-verse novel, Linda Phillips explores that stigma with insight, candor, and wit through teenager Laura Wahlberg who lives with her parents in a small house outside of Crawford Hills, Oregon, a lumber mill town.
Iris, her mother, has been behaving increasingly weird for weeks. She “smokes and stares/stares and paces/paces and mutters/and stares and stares … through … eyes that shut you out of her secret world …” Harold, Laura’s father, works at the paper mill, recites poetry from memory, grows petunias, and dearly loves his wife. He deals with her problems by “bang bang, banging” with his hammer, slipping down to the VFW for a drink, and forbidding Laura to cry because “big girls don’t cry.” Paula, Laura’s older sister, married young to escape her mother, has two small children, helps with Iris, and, Laura assumes, is glad to no longer be living in a “loony bin.” The family’s tacit code of conduct is to never reveal feelings or talk openly, especially about Iris.
Laura, age 15, earns straight A’s in school, fears bully Jerry Pruner, longs to date Dennis Martin, hates chemistry, and dreads home economics. Laura escapes from the “loony bin” to her room where “drawing or painting make her stomachache go away.” Laura is suicidal. When crossing the canal bridge to school and back every day, she often stops to admire the pelicans or to swing her legs over the edge. Increasingly, she wants to “just slip off and down/and down/and down.”
Laura hates her mother for being crazy and yearns for a “normal” home even though, she writes, “I’m not even sure/what normal is when it comes to our/family … ” Normal mothers, she believes, sew beautiful outfits for their daughters or make delicious orange rolls. But her mother, a talented artist whose pictures glow with a “Rembrandt feeling,” switched to painting the stupid religious statues cluttering their home. Laura especially loathes the frieze of the Last Supper, painted “in one boring color/of gold.” Hoping to snap Iris out of her lethargy, Laura asks her why she doesn’t start painting again.
A month later, Laura returns from school to find canvases, paint tubes, and rags strewn about the house and her mother “kneeling/muttering/crossing herself/before a dripping canvas.” When Iris is diagnosed with a “nervous breakdown” and admitted to the Salem State Mental Hospital, Laura is convinced that she is to blame. Equally certain that she will “catch” her mother’s craziness, Laura quits painting and stashes her supplies under her bed.
Laura, in her own way, faces a sort of madness as her fears, hurt, and insomnia intensify. She behaves erratically; loses weight; insults Beth and Diane, her closest friends since grade school; and increasingly ponders suicide.
Though the term would not be invented until 1969, Laura has, fortunately, an unwitting “support group.” Beth and Diane readily forgive her rudeness and worry about her disintegrating health. Laura meets Mrs. Bocher, who listens and, due to personal tragedy, understands. Dr. Goodman, her mother’s physician, tells Laura that he is available if “she ever needs help.” No matter how erratically Laura behaves, each person unconditionally reaches out to help her.
The book was marketed for young adults (YA), but anyone interested in mental health, for personal or professional reasons, will value Crazy. If the first-person insights seem especially perceptive, that’s because Laura’s story is semi-autobiographical. Phillips writes in the Afterword that “Crazy is loosely based on events and experiences from my own life.”
The story is all the more effective for being written in free verse with jagged edges reflecting Laura’s emotional journey. Each chapter is a month divided into vignettes, some so short that they might seem superfluous. To the contrary, Phillips’ plotting is so precise that removing even one vignette would crumble the story like a block pulled from an orderly stack.
Characters, primary and secondary, grow as needed. Laura, for example, resents her father for “doing nothing” about Iris. In his first scene, he “just sits there in his chair,/behind the newspaper/ … acting as if everything is fine/ …” while Iris stands at the window muttering. Since Laura is such a sympathetic character, we readily “resent” him right along with her. Yet, as the story progresses, Harold emerges as a complex character.
That a story about a suicidal teenager like Laura will be dark is a certainty, but Phillips’ bright and heartening images make despair optional. Laura admires the pelicans because she loves “the way (they) made peace/with (their) bizarre (bodies).” Repeatedly, she calls to mind Van Gogh’s images of starry skies and sunflowers. While weeding her father’s petunias, she recalls that as a child she enjoyed making mud pies and makes a few more. An apricot tree “holds (her)/like a mother cradles a child …” Repeatedly, cheerful images carry her through dark times.
When her story ends a year later, April 1964, Laura is adult enough to realize that she must start the conversations with her father and sister, that she must ask questions if she wants answers. But Laura is still a girl in many ways, so the prospect of challenging her father and sister’s stubborn resistance to honesty remains an overwhelming challenge.
15-year-old Laura’s mother suffers from bipolar disorder and the family suffers right along with her, as most often happens. The author took parts of her own life, apparently having a mother who also suffered from mental illness. In the sixties, where the story takes place, mental illness carried much stigma so families kept this very secret. A lot of effort went into hiding the ailment from others. Kids never brought friends home to play or for sleepovers. If the family member was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, the family’s secret keeping went into high alert.
Now this may sound crazy in itself, but people outside the family secret did treat kids and adults with a mentally ill family member differently—poorly, often as if the craziness could rub off the family and onto them. According to ASH Clinical News many people did not consider mental illness a medical disorder. Instead, mental illness was a problem of attitude, disposition, and a weakness of the will. Thus, mentally ill people could cure themselves by changing their attitude and their disposition by just acting normal. “If they would just do this or do that, they would be fine in no time,” was the basic attitude of most people.
The mother was a brilliant artist when younger, but gave it up. Laura encourages her mother to paint again, thinking it might help her mother regain her sense of self and thus act more normal. Instead, her mother has a “nervous breakdown.” Now Laura blames herself because she encouraged her mother to paint and, in her mind, the act of painting again caused her mother to collapse. Being a gifted artist in her own right, Laura is terrified that she will tumble into the same black hole her mother has. At one point, Laura even believes she is on her way, and in great fear and despair, refuses to paint, despite a contest deadline looming near.
NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
“If you’ve ever been there
when a lightbulb gets real bright
just before it blows out,
then you know what it was like
around here when things got extremely crazy,
right before they shipped Mama off
to the nut house.
“It’s all my fault
for suggesting
she take up painting again.
That’s what she was doing
that day I came home
to such a mess.
She was trying to paint on canvas,
not ceramics,
and maybe,
well, maybe she just forgot
how to do it
and it frustrated her real bad.
I could see she was beside herself
with frustration.
“I never should have suggested it.
“Maybe that’s why she put her hand
on the hot stove last night
and didn’t even smell
the burning flesh.
Now on top of her craziness
she has a bandaged hand.”
The problem in the sixties, as it was in the fifties, and every decade past, was a lack of information. Even today, though much enlightened, some still attach a stigma to mental illness. Books like Crazy help change these views by looking to the next generation. Laura, having been kept in the dark by her family (Laura is not old enough to understand), knows little about her mother’s illness. She understands mom is crazy, as she lives with the craziness each day. Laura watches her mother sit in a chair all day, staring at nothing in particular and worrying about everything (JFK’s assassination occurs), then watches her mother in crazed action, with energy that overflows and keeps her moving for days.
Laura gives up her own artistic talent to maintain her sanity, but it does not work. Laura feels herself falling deeper into a hole she cannot comprehend. Despite asking what is specifically going on with her mother, no one will explain. Not understanding, Laura’s mind works herself into her own despair. Overloaded with a sick mother, keeping secrets, and normal teen angst Laura works herself into believing she is beginning the slow descent into craziness. Her father has closed himself off, in his own attempts to deal with an ill wife he dearly loves, so Laura does not get the support she needs from him. Her older sister is busy with her own family, having married young. Laura’s friends are in the dark, though would most likely be a great support system for her, if she was not so afraid to tell them.
Crazy does a great job describing mental illness fifty years ago and an even better job of describing a kid who must live with a mentally ill parent. The writing is easy to read and a fast read, since most of the verse deals with Laura and her thoughts, rather than visual descriptions. It works. I think an advanced middle grader could read Crazy and enjoy the story along with a new understanding of mental illness. Crazy was difficult to put down, even for an hour. I read the 314 pages in one evening. The story is that compelling and that interesting. I needed to know how Laura was going to deal with her mother’s illness. Would she ever return to painting? Could she ever tell her friends? Would Laura really descend into darkness, herself, as she imagines is happening? Will anyone ever speak truthfully and answer Laura’s questions? I just had to know.
Laura tries to protect herself from a mother she does not understand and friends who might abandon her if they knew her secret. I enjoyed this emotionally stirring story. Crazy drew me into the story immediately with the powerful writing. The author does a great job leading the reader down the path she wants them to walk. Laura is a credible character and one in which many kids will see themselves. Laura will have your empathy, but it will take time to understand the other characters’ motives. The story rolls out perfectly. I know this because I have a brother with bipolar disorder. In a group setting, Crazy can easily lead to a great discussion. I recommend Crazy for advanced readers age 12 and up, including adults.
They say there’s one in every family.
They don’t usually say much more than that, but that much, at least, they do say.
The truth is, of course, that most families have several. Mine has at least three . . . that I know of.
We don’t talk about it, even amongst ourselves — and never, ever so publicly as this.
It makes sense, then, that Linda Vigen Phillips’s new young adult novel Crazy would resonate deeply with me. Even though it’s set in the 1960s (well before my time), Phillips’s first-person, free-verse story of fifteen-year-old Laura — struggling to cope with her mother’s mental illness as both of their worlds spiral out of control — feels real and close and . . .
And here I go, writing and deleting and rewriting again, moving paragraphs around willy-nilly, hoping that the next cut, the next edit will make the task at hand a little easier.
Why should this post be harder to write than the one about baby-making? Why does it make me so nervous to acknowledge openly — even in only the vaguest of terms — that the specter of mental illness has touched my life, too?
We like to think we’re more enlightened about it than people in Laura’s day, but are we really?
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that, although folks nowadays have disturbingly little trouble telling anyone who will listen about their heart attacks, hemorrhoids, and head lice, it’s rare to hear anyone share their honest struggles with clinical depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety, schizophrenia, or any of dozens of other common psychological maladies.
Laura certainly doesn’t talk about it. She doesn’t talk about her mother’s manic fits, long hospitalizations, or “nervous breakdowns.” She won’t let anyone know that her mom doesn’t spend her days sewing or cooking like other moms do – that her mom just sits and stares and smokes. It’s far easier for her to lie and tell her friends that her mom suffers from a “rare blood disease” than to admit the truth: that she’s . . . crazy.
And because Laura can’t talk about it, even to ask questions, she has no way to access the answers she desperately needs. She doesn’t know why her mother’s sick. She doesn’t know or believe that her mother’s illness can be managed. What’s more, she’s terrified that, whatever her mother has, she’s getting it, too.
We have better access now, don’t we? A person suffering from mental illness today can seek help and treatment — and even (if they’re lucky) talk their insurance companies into paying for it.
Even so, etiquette still demands that folks keep mostly mum about their mental health issues. No one, after all, wants to admit publicly that they — or those closest to them — are crazy.
They say there’s one in every family . . .
I wish I could say more. I really do. I wish, especially for the sake of all the kids out there — kids like Laura, alone and confused — that I could share all the stories I know, all the truths.
Ultimately, however, they aren’t my stories to share, and the consequences of my sharing them could be very real for those whose stories they are.
When it comes down to it, we still aren’t all that enlightened about mental illness. When it comes right down to it, nobody’s looking to hire someone who’s mentally ill . . . grant custody to someone who’s mentally ill . . . date or marry someone who’s mentally ill.
Maybe though, just maybe, a beautiful, powerful book like Crazy will make the stories a little easier to tell — and the truth about mental illness a little easier to face.