Category: Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN-13: 9780399139864
Pub. Date: August 1995
Date Read: July 2009
“Mother was depressed almost always, and her sadness was fractured only by wild, delusional turns of mind, with brief periods of stability that were celebrated and remembered by my family as though they were spectacular occurrences, like total eclipses or meteor showers.”
For 12-year-old Hattie Barnes, normal means not knowing how her mother will react one minute to the next but in this story Hattie recounts one moment in her life when it seemed that life in their home in North Carolina was going to be at least peaceful, it was the moment her mother was institutionalized.
Hattie grew up an anxious child seeing her mother's highs and lows and she saw her father try his best to care for his wife without much success. If it hadn't been for their housekeeper, Pearl, Hattie would have been left much on her own without any real mothering.
What leads to her mother being institutionalized is when Mrs. Barnes runs down another woman with her car and finally the family can no longer protect her as they were accustomed to and send her to Duke Hospital for treatment, which includes electroshock therapy.
Hattie and her brother are basically unseen as they grow up. It is sad to see a young child not really understand the manic depression that her mother has. What we do understand is how desperately she just wants normal.
The power of this book comes across in that it almost feels like a memoir. And you can't help but feel sympathy for the characters.