01/08/2024
This emotional and illuminating story, the debut from Dirkby, probes life with mental illness over two generations, as narrator Sarah—who, like the author, lives with paranoid schizophrenia—reflects on her childhood with a mother who herself has paranoid schizophrenia, and an abusive, uncaring father who continually moves the family around Australia. With time jumps from the past to the present, Sarah examines the trauma that comes from having or loving someone with a mental illness, especially in cases where those involved don’t understand or realize what they’re enduring. As Sarah learns more about her mother and her mental illness, throughout her fraught adolescence and into maturity, she eventually arrives at a better understanding of her mother, herself, and ways to cope with and manage her own paranoid schizophrenia.
With hard-won insight, Dirkby weaves together a resonant story of mental health, family, and learning to accept oneself and that which cannot be controlled. Through both the uncertain gaze of Sarah’s childhood and the clarifying reflections of later life, as Sarah deals with romance and making a living, Dirkby immerses readers in her mind and life. Constantly being misdiagnosed as having post traumatic stress disorder from her childhood experiences, the adult Sarah often finds herself facing her mind alone, depressed and afraid. Dirkby's characters feel true, as do their experiences, which resonate with telling detail, not just about schizophrenia and anosognosia—the condition of being unaware of one’s psychiatric condition—but the worlds of music and dance.
"The stigma that a mentally ill person is entirely to blame for anything going wrong in their life and that they are dangerous to know is ubiquitous but rarely accurate," Sarah states. The Overlife is a touching story that, with vivid detail and welcome frankness, shreds such misapprehensions throughout its often heartbreaking story of family, unconditional love, forgiveness, and unquiet minds. During its many bleak or tense moments, the book’s very existence offers a feeling of hope.
Takeaway: Revealing novel steeping readers in the experience of mental illness.
Comparable Titles: Arnhild Lauveng’s A Road Back from Schizophrenia, Han Nolan’s Crazy.
Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
