Description

Where do mental illness stories begin

Annas always had too many feelings Or not enough feelings shes never been quite sure Debilitating panic Extraordinary melancholy Paranoia Ambivalence Fear Despair

From anxious child to terrified parent mental illness has been a constant A harsh critic in the big moments teenage pregnancy divorce a dream career falling in love and a companion in the small ones getting to the supermarket feeding all her cats remembering which child is which

But between therapists rooms and emergency departments theres been a feeling even harder to explain optimism

In this sharpeyed and illuminating memoir awardwinning writer Anna SpargoRyan pieces together the relationships between time mental illness and our brain as the keeper of our stories Against the backdrop of her own experience she interrogates reality how it can be fractured and why its so hard to put it back together

Powerfully honest tender and often funny A Kind of Magic blends meticulous research with vivid snapshots of the stuff that breaks us and the magic of finding ourselves again