Immersive ... deBoer, in clear, matter-of-fact prose, pierces this facade to show a person unravelling very quickly ... Slim but powerful, gripping without making any effort to manipulate the reader through a redemptive plot arc or even milking sympathy for Alice ... There is not an ounce of sensationalism or sentimentality to Alice’s story.
The prose of The Mind Reels does not evoke the inner experience of psychosis, like, for instance, the racing, associative sentences in Edward St. Aubyn’s Parallel Lines ... The writing is muddled at times by a certain narrative slippage wherein one cannot tell whether the biting observations about clueless classmates and pretentious doctors come from Alice or Mr. deBoer. The insertions of social criticism seem especially misplaced, because the core of this compact novel is so tough and powerful. It has the verisimilitude of a case study and the dread of an existential drama.
Short but brutal ... The novella is devoid of most fictional affectations. In place of an aspirational narrative featuring a quirky protagonist overcoming personal adversity is the relentless grind of Alice’s soul-robbing efforts to get better ... An existential, no-win dilemma that leads to the novel’s unsettling final pages ... Since David Foster Wallace’s death, the everyday reality of mental illness has rarely been captured as rigorously and without adornment as deBoer’s hard-to-shake portrait of a woman in unceasing crisis.
Bracing ... The author convincingly portrays Alice’s chaotic and isolated life, in which she is gripped by 'unyielding, endless shame.' It’s a searing portrait of a woman on the brink.
