Bücher von Diana Dirkby

The author of this book, Diana Dirkby, is an Australian-born researchmathematician who lives with paranoid schizophrenia, a severe braindisorder, as did her mother. The title, "The Overlife," suggests that adiagnosis of schizophrenia can be the beginning of a new, worthwhile lifeand not simply the death of the hopes and dreams that preceded thediagnosis. This book gives a fictional account of a mother and daughterliving with paranoid schizophrenia. We follow the widely disparate effects ofthis brain disorder on Sarah, the narrator, and her mother, Jodie. We alsomeet Dalaigh, Jodie's husband and Sarah's father, with his violentresentment at being trapped in a marriage he doesn't want. By age eight,Sarah is Jodie's caregiver and must negotiate her mother's rapidly worseningmental health and her father's white-hot fury. The weight of these adultconflicts on the shoulders of one so young seems impossible to bear.