Sarah's Library

I recieved a free copy of this book from the author in return for a review.  This has not impacted on my ability to review this book in an honest and critical way.

14/1 - I can really empathise with Richard, the main character, as when I was younger I experienced some of the emotions and problems that Richard is going through.  Fortunately I never hurt myself and now I am happy and feel lucky that I am still here.  The description of the psychiatric hospital and its inpatients is very disturbing, especially as I get the impression that those institutions haven't changed much over the years between when this book is set and today.  The idea of parents forcing their child to sign themselves into a place like that, literally holding their hand and making them trace out their signature while they are under the influence of so many drugs they can't hold the pen on their own - well, it made me so mad I can't actually remember what I was thinking while I was reading it last night, just that I was really angry and I wanted to give the parents a good piece of my mind.  To be continued...

23/1 - I am really enjoying this story but finding it hard to review.  There is a bit of a mystery surrounding the figures Richard is seeing nightly, but because of the way Richard thinks and writes it's hard to understand exactly what's going on - I know I'm not going be able to work it out before Jacoby purposefully reveals it, Richard's mind is just too hard to guess at.  I like the way Richard answers questions other patients, his parents etc ask him, honestly in his mind, but then says the 'polite' thing - what the 'normal' people or the professionals want to hear or think he should say.  Don't want to upset anyone or seem abnormally emotional, they might ECT him (I do that all the time, especially with my parents, but in regard to much more inconsequential things than what Richard is dealing with).  To be continued...

8/2 - I found this book great and frustrating.  Great because it was a really interesting story; I cared and worried about the main character Richard and the writing was just like being able to read the mind of a troubled young man.  Frustrating because most of the dialogue was hard to follow due to the fact that it often wasn't clear who was speaking to who and what was being said internally by Richard and what he was saying out loud; because of some of the decisions Richard made that seemed to make life harder for him than was necessary; and because of the ambiguous ending - did Richard's father jump in front of the gun to save him or did Bug spin around and shoot Richard's father because he surprised him in the midst of another attempted murder.  Plus, what happened to Bug afterwards?  Did he simply run away?  Why didn't he finish what he was there for and shoot Richard too?  Less witnesses that way.  If there was ever a movie I think Sam Neil should play Richard's father and possibly Joan Cusack as his mother, that was how I pictured them as I was reading.  No thoughts on who should play Richard.