The Mind Reels

In his debut novel, longtime observer of culture and politics Fredrik deBoer depicts mental illness in all its grim and ugly reality, free of our culture's endless romanticization of insanity. In a dorm room at her safety school, surrounded by corn-fed boys and contemptuous girls, Alice is losing her mind. Her first semester is spent clinging to middling grades between drunken hookups and roommate fights. The next brings sleepless nights, extreme weight loss, and effortless, compulsive energy, paused only by an unexpected summoning from the RA for evaluation. Thus begins an endless march of lithium, antidepressants, and Klonopin; doctors and therapists—when health insurance allows—along with overwhelmed parents and well-intentioned friends; all helpless bystanders as Alice descends deeper into chaos. As chilling as a psychiatric case study, as wry and precise as Flaubert, The Mind Reels peels back society's polite trappings to portray the experience of mental illness in all its complexity.