There Is No Blue
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Granta Publications Ltd
Published:18th Jan '24
£16.99
Available for immediate dispatch.
From a celebrated Canadian author, a profound meditation on grief and the impact of mental illness on a family.
The three protagonists in this memoir are dead: a mother, a father, and a sister. A bookish and artistic family living in a beautiful old house in a pleasant part of Toronto. Two girls growing up in the 60s and 70s. All seems well until one of them begins to manifest signs of distress, leading, eventually, to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In this triptych of beautifully written memoir-essays, Canadian author Martha Baillie reflects on the complex entangled lives of her mother, father and sister. There Is No Blue is both a close observation of a family's experience of a diagnosis of mental illness, and a layered story of grief.
This is a stunning memoir, intense and meticulous in its observations of family life. Baillie subtly interrogates and conveys the devastating mistranslations that take place in childhood, the antagonism and porousness of siblings, and the tragedy of schizophrenia as it unfolds. I couldn't put it down. -- Lisa Appignanesi
A meditation on the mystery and wonder of grief and art making and home and memory itself... Baillie's variety of attention, carved out of language, is tenderness, is love... Extraordinary -- Maud Casey, author of City of Incurable Women
Exquisite -- Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of How to Pronounce Knife
Strange, unsettling, highly evocative, often disturbing. Its brave honesty is amplified by a persistent lyricism; its undercurrent of fear is uplifted by a surprising, resilient hopefulness. It is both a plea for exoneration and an act of exoneration, an authentic meditation on the terrible difficulty of being human -- Andrew Solomon
ISBN: 9781803511030
Dimensions: 225mm x 243mm x 20mm
Weight: 305g
192 pages