The Collected Schizophrenias

Several reviewers call the book a “cold, dispassionate look at schizophrenia” exactly where the material turns hardest. Repeated mentions of designer labels, perfume, and makeup while she describes crisis read to reviewer after reviewer as class privilege that never gets examined, and one goes further, accusing her of “trying to prove how she is a good crazy person.” The historical research and the personal narrative do not always braid together, one reader writing that the “anecdotal and clinical were not thoughtfully woven together,” and the essay on the real-life Slenderman stabbing draws criticism for a factual slip that shakes trust elsewhere. A later essay drifts into near-mystical territory a reader felt belonged to another book. One verdict lands in between: “important book, but not a great one.”