Articoli correlati a Relative Stranger: A Life After Death
“This is the story of my search for my sister Catherine, after her death. This is the story of schizophrenia, and the terrible things that it does to people.”
–Mary Loudon
A multi-faceted and extraordinarily honest look at the devastating toll that schizophrenia takes on its victims and on those who care about them, Mary Loudon’s Relative Stranger is riveting, illuminating, and heart-wrenching. It is the author’s fascinating quest to find her sister Catherine, who was lost to her family long before she died, in Catherine’s home, in her last hospital room, her paintings, her letters, her clothes. But perhaps even more compelling is Mary Loudon’s internal journey. In facing the truths about Catherine’s life and death, she asks hard questions about sanity, about family responsibility, about love, and about what it means to say that a life is – or is not – worth living. With intelligence, compassion, and a sharp eye for the funny as well as the sad, Mary Loudon ensures that we question everything we thought we knew about what it means to love, to lose, to live and die, and, most of all, to belong.
My sister, Catherine, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Her illness was in place at birth and apparent during her childhood. During her teenage years, it asserted itself suddenly and aggressively. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, it had destroyed her chances of living anything approaching a normal life. . . .
Following a severe breakdown, she first went missing, abroad, when she was nineteen and I was five. She was first sectioned when I was six, first sent to prison when I was seven. . . . She last wrote to me a year before her death from cancer, when she was forty-six and I was thirty-two.
After Catherine died, I went to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, to see her body, and the hospital room where she had died. It was only there and then that I discovered one of many extraordinary things about my sister. For the last eight years of her life she had lived as a man.
–Mary Loudon
A multi-faceted and extraordinarily honest look at the devastating toll that schizophrenia takes on its victims and on those who care about them, Mary Loudon’s Relative Stranger is riveting, illuminating, and heart-wrenching. It is the author’s fascinating quest to find her sister Catherine, who was lost to her family long before she died, in Catherine’s home, in her last hospital room, her paintings, her letters, her clothes. But perhaps even more compelling is Mary Loudon’s internal journey. In facing the truths about Catherine’s life and death, she asks hard questions about sanity, about family responsibility, about love, and about what it means to say that a life is – or is not – worth living. With intelligence, compassion, and a sharp eye for the funny as well as the sad, Mary Loudon ensures that we question everything we thought we knew about what it means to love, to lose, to live and die, and, most of all, to belong.
My sister, Catherine, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Her illness was in place at birth and apparent during her childhood. During her teenage years, it asserted itself suddenly and aggressively. By the time she was in her mid-twenties, it had destroyed her chances of living anything approaching a normal life. . . .
Following a severe breakdown, she first went missing, abroad, when she was nineteen and I was five. She was first sectioned when I was six, first sent to prison when I was seven. . . . She last wrote to me a year before her death from cancer, when she was forty-six and I was thirty-two.
After Catherine died, I went to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, to see her body, and the hospital room where she had died. It was only there and then that I discovered one of many extraordinary things about my sister. For the last eight years of her life she had lived as a man.
Le informazioni nella sezione "Riassunto" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.
Recensione:
“Astonishing. . . . Mary Loudon sets out to learn the story of her vanished sister, but winds up finding herself. A haunting, harrowing meditation on the meaning of family, of love, and of madness. Memorable, lyrical, and unsettling.”
–Jennifer Boylan, author of She's Not There
“People as empathic as Mary Loudon are rare. Writers as incisive and clean are even rarer. Her loving, sharp, elucidating journey into the mind of madness is a testament to the power of understanding.”
–Norah Vincent, author of New York Times Bestseller Self-Made Man
"Loudon has "a novelist’s eye for detail – nudging the heartbreaking chaos of her sister’s terrible flat towards the transforming beauty of still life. . . . Vivid, true and moving."
–The Times (UK)
"One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, . . . . a brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life."
–The Scotsman (UK)
"Remarkable and very affecting, and a comfort too. Mary Loudon sees through the dark of insanity to the light of understanding."
–Fay Weldon
“Written with great flair, clarity, imaginative intensity, and extraordinary confidence and style. Honest and unvarnished and without mawkishness of any kind. Convincing, gripping and moving, it will deserve to be a triumph.”
–Jonathan Dimbleby
“[Loudon’s] book heaves with emotional involvement: our hackles rise when a man who runs a drop-in centre describes Catherine as a ‘shadowy figure’, precisely the sort of dismissal from which this account succeeds in rescuing her. . . . ‘I see a woman who didn’t lack friends,’ the author concludes, satisfied. Nor did she lack a sister who loved her.”
–The Sunday Times (UK)
“[A] moving memoir [that] describes how mental illness can break even the strongest bonds. . . . Relative Stranger reads almost like a novel of the well written kind. . . . [A] remarkable and powerful illustration of the value of every human life, no matter how it is lived. . . . [An] extraordinary story of ordinary people.”
–Scotland on Sunday
“An intelligent work of self-searching, self-reassurance and justification. . . . Loudon’s clear moral tone and determined purpose give her prose a swing and balance.”
–The Guardian (UK)
“This is a touching and revealing account of a life discovered after death.”
–Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
“One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, and never strains for emotive effect. . . . [A] brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life, showing just how much of a personality it can occlude, but also the value of what’s left.”–The Scotsman
“A perceptive and sensitive exploration of the judgments that society makes on the value of people's lives. . . . This book will offer balm to many who have loved and lost a person with severe mental illness, and challenges many of the myopic misconceptions and generalizations that are ascribed to those who live with mental illness.”–The Lancet (UK medical journal)
“Loudon is always honest, and her internal journey as she faces head-on her older sister’s illness and alter-ego is compelling. . . . Loudon has successfully confronted her demons in this book, and there will be many readers who can empathize. They may even take comfort from the writer’s experiences.”–The Oxford Times Supplement (UK)
“Loudon’s accomplishment here seems courageous and large. The world feels more alarming, but somehow wider with this account of an estranged, and strangely vital relative who lived in it, for a while.”–Times Literary Supplement
“Move this to the top of your reading list because it’s a gem, in which Loudon tackles the tricky subject of how you grieve for a loved one you barely knew...It’s a book full of questions — because isn’t that what you’re left with when you lose someone? — as well as a vibrantly honest account of raw emotions.” --Glamour
“[Loudon’s sister] Catherine was schizophrenic. With that nugget of information, the way opens for a wistful, we-have-recognize-the-devastation-this-disease-wreaks book, but Loudon doesn’t take that route. Relative Stranger: A Life After Death reads more like a travel mystery, undercut with bleak humour. . . . Beneath it all is Loudon’s admiration for the ‘family’ that did look after Catherine. . . . Loudon has written not just a history of the sister she never saw as an adult, but a weird travel book about a place that most of us, if we’re lucky, will escape visiting.”–Toronto Star
L'autore:
–Jennifer Boylan, author of She's Not There
“People as empathic as Mary Loudon are rare. Writers as incisive and clean are even rarer. Her loving, sharp, elucidating journey into the mind of madness is a testament to the power of understanding.”
–Norah Vincent, author of New York Times Bestseller Self-Made Man
"Loudon has "a novelist’s eye for detail – nudging the heartbreaking chaos of her sister’s terrible flat towards the transforming beauty of still life. . . . Vivid, true and moving."
–The Times (UK)
"One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, . . . . a brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life."
–The Scotsman (UK)
"Remarkable and very affecting, and a comfort too. Mary Loudon sees through the dark of insanity to the light of understanding."
–Fay Weldon
“Written with great flair, clarity, imaginative intensity, and extraordinary confidence and style. Honest and unvarnished and without mawkishness of any kind. Convincing, gripping and moving, it will deserve to be a triumph.”
–Jonathan Dimbleby
“[Loudon’s] book heaves with emotional involvement: our hackles rise when a man who runs a drop-in centre describes Catherine as a ‘shadowy figure’, precisely the sort of dismissal from which this account succeeds in rescuing her. . . . ‘I see a woman who didn’t lack friends,’ the author concludes, satisfied. Nor did she lack a sister who loved her.”
–The Sunday Times (UK)
“[A] moving memoir [that] describes how mental illness can break even the strongest bonds. . . . Relative Stranger reads almost like a novel of the well written kind. . . . [A] remarkable and powerful illustration of the value of every human life, no matter how it is lived. . . . [An] extraordinary story of ordinary people.”
–Scotland on Sunday
“An intelligent work of self-searching, self-reassurance and justification. . . . Loudon’s clear moral tone and determined purpose give her prose a swing and balance.”
–The Guardian (UK)
“This is a touching and revealing account of a life discovered after death.”
–Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
“One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, and never strains for emotive effect. . . . [A] brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life, showing just how much of a personality it can occlude, but also the value of what’s left.”–The Scotsman
“A perceptive and sensitive exploration of the judgments that society makes on the value of people's lives. . . . This book will offer balm to many who have loved and lost a person with severe mental illness, and challenges many of the myopic misconceptions and generalizations that are ascribed to those who live with mental illness.”–The Lancet (UK medical journal)
“Loudon is always honest, and her internal journey as she faces head-on her older sister’s illness and alter-ego is compelling. . . . Loudon has successfully confronted her demons in this book, and there will be many readers who can empathize. They may even take comfort from the writer’s experiences.”–The Oxford Times Supplement (UK)
“Loudon’s accomplishment here seems courageous and large. The world feels more alarming, but somehow wider with this account of an estranged, and strangely vital relative who lived in it, for a while.”–Times Literary Supplement
“Move this to the top of your reading list because it’s a gem, in which Loudon tackles the tricky subject of how you grieve for a loved one you barely knew...It’s a book full of questions — because isn’t that what you’re left with when you lose someone? — as well as a vibrantly honest account of raw emotions.” --Glamour
“[Loudon’s sister] Catherine was schizophrenic. With that nugget of information, the way opens for a wistful, we-have-recognize-the-devastation-this-disease-wreaks book, but Loudon doesn’t take that route. Relative Stranger: A Life After Death reads more like a travel mystery, undercut with bleak humour. . . . Beneath it all is Loudon’s admiration for the ‘family’ that did look after Catherine. . . . Loudon has written not just a history of the sister she never saw as an adult, but a weird travel book about a place that most of us, if we’re lucky, will escape visiting.”–Toronto Star
Mary Loudon is the author of three previous books, all published to wide critical acclaim: Secrets and Lives: Middle England Revealed; Revelations: The Clergy Questioned; and Unveiled: Nuns Talking. She has won several writing prizes in the UK, appeared frequently on radio and television, reviewed for The Times (UK), and been a Whitbread Prize judge. Mary Loudon lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two daughters.
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- EditoreBond Street Books
- Data di pubblicazione2006
- ISBN 10 0385661274
- ISBN 13 9780385661270
- RilegaturaCopertina rigida
- Numero di pagine352
- Valutazione libreria
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Relative Stranger. A Life After Death
Editore:
Bond Street Books, Toronto
(2006)
ISBN 10: 0385661274
ISBN 13: 9780385661270
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Descrizione libro Hardcover. Condizione: Fine. Condizione sovraccoperta: Fine. First Canadian Edition. Stiff unmarked book in crisp dust jacket. ; 8.50 X 5.90 X 1.20 inches; 352 pages. Codice articolo 38494
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