Well, I’d like to start this review by saying, I ACTUALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK!!
Honestly, this is a bit of an accomplishment for me considering the last book I actually finished was Easy Go back in the beginning of July (and before that? a guide to freelancing back in May!!). I guess that doesn’t seem like a long time but I think I’ve started about a book a week since then and haven’t made it through a single one of em. I suppose that’s another post altogether.
Anyway . . . Stay Crazy. Erica Satifka’s debut novel is really something different. Narrated from the point of view of a Schizophrenic protagonist, there is a lot that we could expect from just the premise alone. We’re used to reading Gothic tales of large houses and doppelgangers which we use as metaphors to explore the psyche and glean inferences of what it might be like to have such an affliction. Those stories never leave us feeling anything good towards whatever condition they’re attempting to expound upon. Stay Crazy is much more practical . . . and much more modern.
We don’t have castles or crypts but instead a big-box discount store. We don’t have nameless horrors (although we kind of do), but we do have a detective calling the shots from another dimension (basically aliens). And we also have a snarky college dropout who knows that a frozen dinner couldn’t really be talking to her, but that doesn’t matter as she can still hear what it’s saying and it sounds pretty important.
What I liked about the book is that the take feels so genuine. Satifka isn’t trying to reach some fundamental of mental illness that we have to tease out or extrapolate. She’s writing about one condition that she has clearly done her homework on, and has built a character and story around. And once things start moving, it becomes a nail-biter pretty quickly.
My only problem with the story is that we don’t have any other points of view. We are in a constant state of: “Is this really happening?” or “Ok but what’s really going on?”. I suppose the answer to that question isn’t super important and actually, it was probably a shrewd move on the author’s part not to give us closure as I expect people living with a mental illness of this type never get a definitive answer either.
My last criticism of the story relates to what I said above. There are a few scenes that I could’t really place in the overall narrative other than just general craziness which would perhaps be a symptom (side effect?) of the character’s struggle with mental illness. I suppose these sequences helped get across the point of “this is what it’s like” but I never did figure out if they served some other purpose as well.
In all, this is definitely a book I would talk to my friends about (and have already done so) if for nothing more than it seems unique. I’ve not yet read a book that attempts to make someone with Schizophrenia the focus point of a novel. And if I have, I’ve not yet read one that does so in a way that doesn’t paint them as some kind of freak or villain, but as someone who struggling towards a better life, and happens to have some extra obstacles thrown in their way.
Until next time . . . Stay Crazy 😉
alligators and aneurysms! 