by Diana Dirkby (Author)
The author of this book, Diana Dirkby, is an Australian-born research
mathematician who lives with paranoid schizophrenia, a severe brain
disorder, as did her mother. The title, "The Overlife," suggests that a
diagnosis of schizophrenia can be the beginning of a new, worthwhile life
and not simply the death of the hopes and dreams that preceded the
diagnosis. This book gives a fictional account of a mother and daughter
living with paranoid schizophrenia. We follow the widely disparate effects of
this brain disorder on Sarah, the narrator, and her mother, Jodie. We also
meet Dalaigh, Jodie's husband and Sarah's father, with his violent
resentment 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 worsening
mental health and her father's white-hot fury. The weight of these adult
conflicts on the shoulders of one so young seems impossible to bear.