PositiveThe Times (UK)There are things that jarred. Jones sometimes lacks a sense of perspective or humour about motherhood. It is as if nobody has ever given birth or struggled with a crying baby before. There is a danger of catastrophising a natural process that is part of life, of denigrating a state that some women long for and are denied ... But Jones, a journalist, writes beautifully and with searing honesty about the life-changing physical and emotional impact of having a child.
Rachel Aviv
RaveThe Times (UK)The honesty and openness with which Aviv, now a New Yorker journalist, describes her childhood experience sets the tone for a book that captures with subtlety and empathy the complicated reality of mental illness ... What makes the book so powerful is that the stories are told in the words of the protagonists. Aviv draws on unpublished journals as well as interviews with family members and experts. The result is a human chronicle that is intimate and unpredictable. Instead of demonising disorders of the mind, Aviv seeks to understand their causes.
