Schizo

July 14, 2014
Sixteen-year-old Miles has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he explains to readers that he had his first delusion on the same day that his younger brother, Teddy, disappeared from a San Francisco beach. While Teddy is presumed to have drowned, Miles believes a witness who claims he was kidnapped and becomes obsessed with the idea that “Teddy is out there. It’s up to me to bring him home.” After Miles flushes his pills, the voices in the head take him down a dangerous, self-destructive path. In his first novel, memoirist Sheff (Tweak) provides an insightful perspective on one teen’s struggle with mental illness, including the challenges of finding the right medications to treat his condition. Sheff’s spare writing style, combined with descriptions of San Francisco’s foggy skies and Miles’s own neglected home that “lets in water when it rains,” creates a mood of isolation and desperation that permeates the story. While the ending wraps up a bit neatly with a rather cinematic revelation, it also provides a welcome note of hope after Miles’s hard-fought quest for peace. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

July 1, 2014
A teen with schizophrenia is getting better-isn't he?Miles has a slew of meds that keep him just stable enough to function, if not enough for popularity. The medication keeps his schizophrenia under control, but it can't do anything about his guilt and grief over lost baby brother Teddy. Teddy vanished (perhaps drowned, perhaps kidnapped) the day Miles' hallucinations first manifested, and his family is saturated with misery, refusing to speak about Teddy and hiding all photographs of him. Miles is convinced he can fix his family's dysfunction if only he can find Teddy, and he sets out on a disjointed, confused but passionate quest for his brother's kidnapper. Meanwhile he negotiates relationships: with his best friend, who is careless with Miles' safety when pressuring him to use drugs and alcohol; with his best friend's girlfriend, the only person who actually looks out for Miles; and with his childhood sweetheart, who is both popular and a two-faced back-stabber. Miles' mental health may not be improving as much as he thinks it is, and his quest culminates in disturbing revelations. Overly choppy prose attempts to represent Miles' delusional state of mind but mostly serves to distract; still, this is a cleareyed, surprisingly hopeful look at the disorder.Given the grim reality of medical management of schizophrenia (and the bleakness of depictions of it in teen fiction), the cautious optimism of Miles' life is most welcome. (Fiction. 14-17)

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June 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Sheff's novel reveals the painful and confusing world of teenage schizophrenia through the experience of Miles, a junior at a small San Francisco private school, where his mother works as a librarian. Miles's few friends only barely understand his struggle to hold on to reality, a tenuous grasp maintained through a dizzying array of pills and the love of his family. Miles is consumed by guilt at the kidnapping or death of his little brother Teddy on the same day he had his first extreme breakdown in a beach bathroom. Two years before, Miles believes, he destroyed his family. Now he believes that if he can just track down Teddy, he can restore their happiness and perhaps move forward himself. His plan is complicated by the return of Eliza, a close childhood friend whom he came to love and who rebuffed him just before her family moved away for two years. She missed his diagnosis and tentative re-entry to high school, plagued by the effects of his medication and suffering through frequent visits to a psychiatrist his family can't really afford. Now that she might actually return his feelings for her, Miles is distracted by Eliza when he needs to focus on Teddy's kidnapper. His visions of menacing crows and some questionable decisions indicate that Miles may be falling deeper into mental illness. Readers fascinated by the dark side of the human mind in realistic fiction will enjoy this deft portrayal of a brain and a life spiraling out of control. Miles is an endearing character whose difficult journey will generate compassion and hope.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
Grades 9-12 Sheff, author of the drug memoirs Tweak (2008) and We All Fall Down (2011), tries his hand at fiction, with similar-feeling results. Two years ago, Miles had a schizophrenic break at the same moment that his little brother, Teddy, vanished from a San Francisco beach. Plagued with guilt for letting it happen and convinced that Teddy was kidnapped, Miles flushes his meds down a drain and determines to find his brother. Much like Sheff's depiction of himself in earlier books, Miles is a mostly incapable protagonist, mumbling through his investigations and vomiting regularly from medicinal unrest. As a protagonist, he is a bit of a rag doll, tossed here and there by external forces and guided only by a schizophrenic God voice. It's an interesting ideaa second personality acting as one's own police partnerbut it's sporadically applied. Miles' bouts of depression come off as too abrupt, and most of the relationships dead-end without notice, but the genre tension is excellent: is this a mystery novel or is it all in his head? A tad undercooked, but not without interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)