Circles around the Sun
In Search of a Lost Brother
-
- USD 10.99
-
- USD 10.99
Descripción editorial
A true story of madness, addiction, and a sister's quest for her lost brother
When Molly McCloskey was a young girl, her brother Mike - fourteen years her senior - started showing signs of paranoid schizophrenia. By the time Molly was old enough to begin to know him, he was frequently delusional, heavily medicated, living in hospitals or care homes or on the road.
In Circles around the Sun, she tells Mike's story - which is also the story of her own demons and of how a seemingly perfect family slowly fell apart and, in the end, regrouped. It is a work of extraordinary intensity and drama from a wonderfully gifted writer.
'Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves. Circles Around the Sun is this kind of book: it's a keeper. A memoir of a schizophrenic brother, written with great care and simplicity, it is one of those stories that waited until its writer was ready to tell it.' Anne Enright, Guardian
'Brilliant, at times heartbreaking ... A remarkably courageous memoir that is as strange and rich as any fiction' Irish Times
'Devastating, beautifully written ... feels like one of those books the author simply had to get written' Dazed & Confused
'Her prose is tender, sometimes dreamlike, and yet rigorously truthful' Justine McCarthy, Sunday Times
'Brilliant ... Circles around the Sun is an extraordinary accounting of singular sorrows and no uncertain triumphs that should resonate for every reader with a family of their own' Irish Times
'There is a rare, uplifting honesty about this heartbreaking story' Irish Independent
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist McCloskey never really got to know her brother, Mike, 14 years her senior, before schizophrenia had taken hold of him, and decides to learn about his life before and everything he lost after in her clear-eyed and heartbreaking story. As she looks back on the charmed adolescence and promise Mike once had adored by his parents, smart, good-looking and a basketball superstar who won a scholarship to Duke and the wreckage from an illness that left him unmoored and unrecognizable, she charts her own unraveling. A heavy drinking habit dating back to high school and a crippling and growing fear that she is going the way of her brother leads to her own descent into depression and panic attacks. "My mind felt porous, as though the filters were disintegrating." Living in rural Ireland where there's little beyond two pubs and in the grip of a virulent paranoia, she is unable to be on her own or to even go to the store for bread. She finally quits drinking in her early 30s and feels profound relief. The depression and anxiety don't disappear entirely, but the moments when they return don't bring the same unending devastation. Although Mike, in his 50s and living in a group home, still feels "very, very present" to his sister, her tender tribute doesn't bring about a relationship with him. And her tender tribute nevertheless brings healing, and grants her and her family a new way to connect to their son and brother.
