Post by sistermoon on Oct 17, 2010 13:52:28 GMT
This is Jo Brand's third novel, after It's Different For Girls and Sorting Out Billy. It deals with a girl called Alice, who's coping with the aftermath of her mother being diagnosed as seriously mentally ill.
She tries to ignore the name-calling at school by listening to her favourite band, The Smiths. Please don't turn off at this point - substitute your favourite classic or prog rock act of the 80's and remember how their music was solace from the crap going on at school!
Jo based a lot of the treatment of Alice's mum in the hospital on what she'd found out in her days working as a psychiatric nurse - the indiscriminate sedation without realising how it affected her as a person and her dealings with her husband and daughter. Some of the incidents describing her mum's zombie-like demeanour under heavy medication reminds me of Steve Hackett's song 'Frozen Statues', and I can see this soundtracking a montage should this ever be adapted as a film.
Initially the reader thinks the mum's just high-spirited or cocky like McMurphy in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', but, following Alice's bargain with the GP responsible to lessen the dosage, it's evident she is not well mentally and begins to relate to Morrissey's song lyrics to the point where she escapes from the hospital and intends to go to Manchester and meet the man himself.
The GP is also in love with Alice's dad, which begs for her to be struck off. The book is marketed as a comic novel, but moments are very sad indeed as in the scene where Alice and her grandma intend to go by train to a Smiths concert, only for the grandma to die on the way to the venue.
She tries to ignore the name-calling at school by listening to her favourite band, The Smiths. Please don't turn off at this point - substitute your favourite classic or prog rock act of the 80's and remember how their music was solace from the crap going on at school!
Jo based a lot of the treatment of Alice's mum in the hospital on what she'd found out in her days working as a psychiatric nurse - the indiscriminate sedation without realising how it affected her as a person and her dealings with her husband and daughter. Some of the incidents describing her mum's zombie-like demeanour under heavy medication reminds me of Steve Hackett's song 'Frozen Statues', and I can see this soundtracking a montage should this ever be adapted as a film.
Initially the reader thinks the mum's just high-spirited or cocky like McMurphy in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', but, following Alice's bargain with the GP responsible to lessen the dosage, it's evident she is not well mentally and begins to relate to Morrissey's song lyrics to the point where she escapes from the hospital and intends to go to Manchester and meet the man himself.
The GP is also in love with Alice's dad, which begs for her to be struck off. The book is marketed as a comic novel, but moments are very sad indeed as in the scene where Alice and her grandma intend to go by train to a Smiths concert, only for the grandma to die on the way to the venue.