Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness / Edition 1

by Clem Martini, Olivier Martini

Overview

In 1976, Ben Martini was diagnosed with schizophrenia. A decade later, his brother Olivier was told he had the same disease. For the past thirty years the Martini family has struggled to comprehend and cope with a devastating illness, frustrated by a health care system lacking in resources and empathy, the imperfect science of medication, and the strain of mental illness on familial relationships.

Throughout it all, Olivier, an accomplished visual artist, drew. His sketches, comic strips, and portraits document his experience with, and capture the essence of, this all too frequently misunderstood disease. In Bitter Medicine, Olivier's poignant graphic narrative runs alongside and communicates with a written account of the past three decades by his younger brother, award-winning author and playwright Clem Martini. The result is a layered family memoir that faces head-on the stigma attached to mental illness.

Shot through with wry humour and unapologetic in its politics, Bitter Medicine is the story of the Martini family, a polemical and poetic portrait of illness, and a vital and timely call for action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551119281
Publisher:	Freehand Books
Publication date:	03/15/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	9.90(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Clem Martini is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He has over thirty plays and ten books of fiction and non-fiction to his credit, including the popular young adult trilogy The Crow Chronicles and Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness, an award-winning collaboration with his brother Olivier. His texts on playwriting, The Blunt Playwright, The Greek Playwright, and The Ancient Comedians are used in universities and colleges across the country. He teaches in the Department of Drama at the University of Calgary.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a rare and powerful book. It gives the meaning of love without talking of love. It is both heartbreaking and truly victorious. It tells us clearly that mental illness is a dimension of 'normal' the way that shadow is a dimension of light. And we should walk with our shadows." — DRAGAN TODOROVIC author of The Book of Revenge

From the Publisher

"This is a rare and powerful book. It gives the meaning of love without talking of love. It is both heartbreaking and truly victorious. It tells us clearly that mental illness is a dimension of 'normal' the way that shadow is a dimension of light. And we should walk with our shadows."

Dragan Todorovic