Crazy

It has been my great joy and privilege to walk alongside of Linda Phillips over the last fifteen years as she has crafted her debut YA novel, CRAZY. From reading the first twenty poems in which Linda poured out her anguish as a teen struggling with her own mother's mental illness; through watching Linda add, subtract, and organize these poems into a story arc at the 2009 Chautauqua Highlights Writing Workshop we attended together; through hearing the up's and down's of finding her agent and publisher; to now actually turning the pages and savoring the poems--it's almost as amazing as watching the birth of a child! Now I have the opportunity to share with you some of my favorite poems and parts of this book. I've read some of these phrases several times and they still catch my breath for their simple beauty and sensory imagery; others surprise me as if I've just discovered a new treasure. Without further ado, here are some gems from CRAZY. In the opening poem, the protagonist, Laura, is humiliated in home ec when the class decides that her best color is brown. This poem not only foreshadows much of Laura's conflicts, but also provides the subtext for the cover of the book: So the class decided on brown for my basic color, as in mud rats rotten bananas swamp water and dirty anything. I ran out the side door after school, thank heavens home ec was last period, thinking my cheeks were so hot they must be leaving a trail of smoke. I stopped by the canal, swarming with hungry pelicans and screeching gulls, and I wondered, just wondered and wondered for I don't know how long, what it would fee like not to sit and dangle my feet through the slats and daydream and watch like I usually do but instead to climb up on the railing, and let myself just slip off and down and down and down. I decided against it because, of course, I'm not the crazy one in our family. (pp.14-15) Laura's artistic talents are admired throughout her school. She sees the same talent--now unexpressed--in her mother. Laura wonders how her mother "had drifted from/creating brilliant oil paintings/to slapping paint on molded figurines." (p. 23) She asks, "Why don't you take up painting again?" I ask her one day, admiring the pleasing arrangement she created when she was fourteen. "Oh, I could never get back to that," she says, slamming a window against the rising storm. (p.24) Her mother's behavior becomes more erratic, irrational, and bizarre. One day Laura comes home from school and finds: First thing inside the door I smell turpentine. I nearly trip over a wet canvas propped against the door frame. I follow a trail of smudgy rags and scattered paint tubes into the living room where I find Mama, her back to me, kneeling muttering crossing herself before a dripping canvas. She's been painting again! "Hail Mary, Other of God…." A sickening sense of panic begins crawling up my spine. "What's going on, Mama?" I ask ………………….. She passes grubby hands absently through her disheveled hair, leaving multicolored streaks and smudges on her face, and she begins crawling on the floor, agitated, frantic, looking for the missing paint or who knows what. …… Then it hits me. This is my fault. I caused this. I pushed her over the edge, oh my God, I did this. It was my suggestion, "Take up painting again," I'd said-- oh my God….. I clean up the mess as best I can, finally getting Mama to sit down in her rocker. Still paint-splattered, she rocks back and forth humming muttering, staring past me without recognition. I watch her rock almost in rhythm with the ticking wall clock and I take deep breaths trying to match the rhythm, trying to beat down the panic surging through my body. (pp.65-68) Here is Linda reading one of the next poems, "Nervous Breakdown." As the book progresses, Laura wrestles with her own demon: her fear of being as crazy as her mother. With the encouragement of two new friends--a local gift shop owner who "stands out like an art piece herself/in a shift dress full of helter-skelter bright colors,/dangly earrings,/and the most beautiful long gray hair/I have ever seen" (p. 148); and her crush, Dennis, who pushes Laura to "dig for answers/don't run, dig"(p.272); Laura discovers the work she must do to discover the truth about herself and her family. ********** There are two things this review of CRAZY cannot do. First, I can't communicate how proud I am of Linda's accomplishment and how wonderful it is to see this book in print. In a previous blog I compared myself to a mid-wife but that's not quite accurate. Linda is like a sister to me. Since CRAZY is her baby, I guess that makes me a proud aunt. Second, I can't begin to tell you how Linda's poetry touched a place deep inside of me. When I finished reading her final poem in which Laura asks her mother for forgiveness, I was in tears: In her typical way, she brushes it off, says I don't have need for forgiveness but of course she forgives me, and she understands my confusion and frustration and she doesn't hold anything against me, and she loves me very much. I'm not sure if she gets it at all, what I am trying to say, but the important thing is I get it and I did what I needed to do and it feels as good as anything I have ever done. I wouldn't want to say it, but I think there has been some healing in our family after all. (p.314)

I enjoyed Crazy very much. Laura’s voice is authentic, totally believable for a child her age living in the 1960s. A young girl terrified that she’d succumb to her mother’s illness that remained unnamed until she pushed for truth. Linda Vigen Phillips flawlessly paints normal tumultuous teen emotions exploding with fear. For those who may shy away from a novel written in verse, Crazy’s plot is so engaging and so smoothly written you won’t even realize you’re being captivated by poetry. Here is one of my favorite stanzas minus the line breaks: “I take my time walking home with one completed project in the bag and one incomplete project buried deeper than I am able to dig.” But it’s near the end that I find a sentence I have adopted for a personal mantra, “Life is too short to spend on the pursuit of a guarantee.” Expect to get more out of reading Crazy than anticipated. It’s an important read to share.

My copy arrived today and I'm instantly drawn into the story. The style is uniquely detached and personal at the same time. The story leads directly to questions beyond how we deal with mental illness to remind us that those afflicted have families and friends who are directly affected and have no reasonable way to escape. It's billed as young adult literature. Don't let that stop any adult from seeing the value in this work.

I loved this book! Such a vivid description of growing up with a bipolar parent. The author spoke to my book club, and after hearing her I had an even greater appreciation for this story. I'm looking forward to reading her next novel.

Very satisfied

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. ~I received a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review!~