Honestly disappointed with this one. There are a lot of books on mental illness out there, this one was saying a lot but saying so little. I think the main point is that even with mental illness you’re not entitled to act like a jerk, or to blame shitty behaviour on it, because it doesn’t just affect you - it makes ripples and currents in families and other people’s lives.

Something went off in Martha’s brain when she was 17, and since then, she’s had periods of despair and panic where she’ll lay in the corner of her bathroom unable to move, or hide under her desk for days, or find herself incomprehensibly enraged and violent. She flings things at her husband, puts the iron through the wall, not being able to decide how she reacts to minor things until she finds herself in the throes of already reacting. All her life she’s been prescribed concoctions of medications and been told by doctors to not get pregnant on them. Years later, after finding her diagnosis, she realises she’s always wanted to be a mother all along.

I felt like the story was going on and on and on and it was hard to empathise with the protagonist because honestly she treated everyone like crap and was so unlikeable, acting like everyone’s lives revolved around her and her mental health. All I did whilst reading was pity Patrick and everyone else that had to deal with Martha, and to refrain myself from yelling at Martha to god just shut up. Even with the “redemption arc” from the letter Martha’s mum wrote her acting as the writer’s voice of reason and morality, I felt like it still wasn’t enough to give me back the hours I spent reading about Martha’s narcissism. It wasn’t super awful, I just think it was so LONG.