A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise

November 1, 2017
A schizophrenic's autobiographical manuscript serves as a creative-nonfiction project for his niece.As a graduate student in creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa, former BuzzFeed editor Allen received a large envelope from the man she had affectionately known as "my crazy uncle Bob." Her mother's brother hadn't been in much contact with the rest of the family outside of phone calls and an occasional cassette of the music he made and that obsessed him. The author set it aside because it disturbed her. However, she eventually not only read it, but began devoting much of her scholastic energy to it, sharing it with fellow students and writing an essay about it. Once she had brought herself to reading it, "what surprised me was how much I liked it--his word choices and style." Allen alternates between her edit of the manuscript she received, preserving the style and substance but cleaning it up some (it had been in all capital letters with irregular punctuation), and her own interpretation of what happened to her uncle: her attempts to corroborate what he had written with his parents and friends and her views on his treatment and psychiatry in general. The result is a patchwork, with the reader not sure what to believe and why it should be significant. Family members disagreed over Bob's diagnosis and his recollections, and Allen's own attempts to find perspective lack authority. "In my experience," she writes, "people who've been psychiatrically diagnosed feel a variety of ways about their diagnosis and about the field of psychiatry itself." She elaborates, "no two people I've interviewed or resources I've read about mental health care in America have felt the same way about what the right treatment should look like. But almost everyone who follows these issues agrees that the situation at present is quite grim." Bob may not have managed to fit inside society, but he found a measure of peace outside it.A glimpse of how schizophrenia looks and feels from the inside.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 11, 2017
In this insightful memoir, Allen, a former BuzzFeed features editor, tracks a relative’s descent into mental illness. In 2009, Allen, who had moved from California to Iowa City to attend the University of Iowa’s creative-nonfiction writing program, received a phone call from her uncle Bob, with whom she had long been out of touch. He explained that he had written a book about his life and that he wanted her to read it. Allen’s extended family had spent time together during vacations at a Minnesota lake when Allen was a child, but over time Allen saw her uncle Bob less frequently, and members of her family referred to him as “crazy.” When the manuscript arrived, Allen didn’t want to deal with it: “It was hideous to look at, even from a distance. Its pages literally reeked.” The manuscript contained incomprehensible ramblings, racial and sexual slurs, and family stories better left untold. In time, she felt compelled to bring his story to the public. She began to edit his writing, and with each rewrite Allen became more engaged with her uncle’s manuscript and his life. Allen builds her uncle’s story on a solid scaffolding of chapters of her family history that alternate with rewritten passages of Bob’s memoir that detail his growing up in Northern California in the 1960s and the state of mental-health care in America at that time as he underwent treatment for schizophrenia. Allen offers readers an incredible glimpse into the life of a person battling with schizophrenia.

February 15, 2018

In this compelling debut, former BuzzFeed editor Allen recounts the life of her Uncle Bob, whom she barely knew until he asked her to share his story. Since his childhood in 1960s Berkeley, CA, Bob meticulously recorded his transient life after his parent's divorce: a diagnosis of schizophrenia at 16, unexpected visits to hospitals and halfway houses, idolizing Jimi Hendrix, and playing guitar in short-lived bands in the Bay Area. Allen is a skillful writer, letting Bob's vivid memories (and occasionally offensive statements) speak for themselves. Especially candid are tales of family trips to Minnesota, which Bob refers to as a "mirraculas paradise," and his efforts to reclaim his faith. Remembrances from family and friends are interspersed with these recollections, offering differing viewpoints. Brief interviews with psychiatrists and geneticists lead Allen to realize that there is no simple definition of schizophrenia nor a consensus on proper treatment. VERDICT A page-turning biography and family history along the lines of Bryan Mealer's The Kings of Big Spring. Don't be put off by the subject--although Allen includes bits of medical history, this is a deeply personal story about an enigmatic person living the only way he knows how: by trial and error. In that, many can relate.--Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.