Words on Bathroom Walls

Starred review from May 15, 2017
Echoing the premise and structure of Flowers for Algernon, this frank and inspiring novel shows how a teen’s life changes after he is given an experimental medication to treat symptoms of schizophrenia. Since age 12, Adam has been tormented by voices and hallucinations. He’s lost friends, as well as the hope that he’ll ever be normal. Now that he’s 16 and has started a clinical trial for miracle drug ToZaPrex, things are changing. Adam still hears voices and hallucinates, but for the first time, he can delineate what’s real and what’s not, and that makes all the difference. His journal entries, written to his therapist during the drug trial, draw readers into the mind of an intelligent, witty young man as he embraces the pleasures of finding a new friend, being accepted on an academic team, and winning a girl’s heart. But as the quality of Adam’s life improves, so do his anxieties. First-time author Walton creates a psychologically tense story with sympathetic characters while dispelling myths about a much-feared condition. Ages 12–up. Agent: Heather Flaherty, Bent Agency.

May 1, 2017
It's 2012, and a 16-year-old boy with schizophrenia starts fresh, with a new drug trial and at a new high school.Adam's old friends didn't stand by him when they became aware of his schizophrenia, though he's been experiencing symptoms since he was 12. Maybe the experimental (fictional) drug he's taking will allow him to control his symptoms enough to make new friends who don't know his history. Through journal entries he's writing for his therapist, Adam details both his changing symptoms and his experiences as a new student at a Catholic school. At first school seems OK despite the provocations of a bully. Adam befriends "impossibly pale...blindingly white" Dwight and starts dating beautiful Filipina Maya. (Adam is Italian-American with no identified race so likely white.) Though the medication works at first, visual hallucinations still plague him. Adam nearly always recognizes his surprisingly coherent, sometimes-helpful hallucinations as not real, and his executive function is generally unimpaired; he can keep his illness hidden from his classmates. But the drug starts failing, and in the anti-mental-illness culture of fear immediately after the Sandy Hook school shooting, Adam's in-school episodes go over poorly. Despite this turn, it's a welcome novel that doesn't treat schizophrenia as an unavoidable sentence of doom and that allots friendship and romance equal weight with mental illness. Readers will find a refreshingly measured look at schizophrenia, but they won't come away with medical facts. (Fiction. 13-17)

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April 1, 2017
Gr 10 Up-Refusing to talk to his psychologist, Adam Petrazelli records answers to the doctor's questions in a running diary. The result is a startling, humorous, and painstakingly honest account of 10 months in the life of a high school boy who has schizophrenia. While Adam participates in an experimental drug trial, his recurring hallucinations appear to fade as the levels of the drug increase. He enrolls at a new school; befriends Dwight, a quirky fellow student; and pursues a romantic relationship with feisty, intelligent Maya. When his life finally begins to resemble that of a typical 11th grader, Adam learns that his miracle treatment is losing its effectiveness. As circumstances spiral out of his control, he desperately attempts to make sense of his illness and accept that his world will never be normal. Walton has crafted a character with unparalleled likability, a boy whose endearing, witty, introspective commentary allows readers to get inside the head of a person with a debilitating mental illness. Through journal entries that catalogue the details of Adam's daily life, including his drug dosage and extraordinary visions of imaginary people, the author brings the gritty details of a complex mental disorder to light. Though the realistic depiction of the disease may be disconcerting to some teens, it succeeds in giving an unfiltered, true-to-life picture of one person's struggle with schizophrenia. VERDICT A heartfelt, gripping story that demystifies an illness too often ignored. Highly recommended for older teens and adults.-Karin Greenberg, Queens College, NY

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