This is an unflinching, feminist work that chronicles the author's troubled relationship with her mother, an Oxford-trained lawyer, whose severe illness - marked by manic bouts of senseless laughter, persistent delusions, and florid hallucinations. Told in fragments, flashbacks, and chronicling the most extreme but unfortunately common aspects of schizophrenia, this elegantly written memoir is a reflection on illness, shame, and the generation gaps that have defined mother-daughter relationships amid the evolution of feminism in the 20th century.
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