The Perfect Other
A Memoir of My Sister
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4.3 • 11 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
“Shines a light on the stigma surrounding mental health and schizophrenia. This deeply personal memoir will give readers greater empathy and understanding in supporting those who are oftentimes misunderstood.” —Sheryl Sandberg
As a child, all Kait Leddy had ever wanted was a little sister. When Kyleigh was born, she and Kait were inseparable; Kait would protect her, include her, cuddle, and comfort her. To Kyleigh, her big sister was her whole world.
But as Kait entered adolescence, her personality changed. She began lashing out emotionally and physically and sometimes lost touch with reality, behavior that worsened after a traumatic head injury. The family struggled to keep this terrifying, often violent, side of Kait private—at school and in her social life, she was still the gorgeous, effervescent life of the party. Powerless to help, Kyleigh watched in horror as her perfect sibling’s world began to collapse and Kait was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Then, in January 2014, twenty-two-year-old Kait disappeared. Though her body was never found, security footage showed her walking to the peak of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge, where it is presumed that she jumped. In this extraordinary memoir— a story of hope, grief, mental illness, and enduring love—a grieving Kyleigh reflects on her sister and their life together, honoring their bond and searching for answers and a way to find meaning in this devastating loss.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Leddy debuts with a heartrending account of her older sister's battle with mental illness. During their childhood in Philadelphia in the 1990s, Leddy saw her sister, Kait, "through the hero-worship lens of a little sister" as an arbiter of all things cool and her unquestioning protector. But as Kait reached adolescence, her joyful personality turned dark and her behavior increasingly frightening—such as one night when she hit their mother in the face. "Kait's illness spread in this darkness the way all creeping matter prospers only in the dampest, most hidden places," Leddy recounts, detailing how, in the years she came of age, her sister, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, "came into madness." Kait's behavior eventually escalated, leading to stints in psychiatric hospitals, before she disappeared from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in January 2014 (an apparent suicide, though her body hasn't been found). Gutting in its intensity, Leddy's narrative grapples with the unearned guilt she still carries regarding Kait's difficult life, but it also celebrates the "exuberantly bright" light her "confident and hilarious" sister once shined upon the people around her. By refusing to allow this to become a story of utter despair, Leddy offers a humanist portrait of the nuances of loving someone with a mental illness. This one isn't easy, but it's well worth the effort.
