Saturday, 20 August 2016

lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
Disclosure: I received an ARC of Stay Crazy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The most important thing to note about Stay Crazy, of course, is that the protagonist is insane. Well, yes, of course. It says right in the blurb that she was discharged from a mental hospital. And yet, she is also at the center of a vast conspiracy. It would have been so easy to make this the story of someone who only appears to be insane, when they are in fact the only ones who see the truth. Most often when I see spec fic stories involving characters confined in mental wards or the like, the story is one of false imprisonment, and draws a sharp line between the POV character and all those other people, the real crazies.

Em is as real-crazy as they come. Despite her unflattering descriptions of her fellow patients, she explicitly sets herself among them, the other psychotics. The book is written in a very subjective and often claustrophobic first person narration, dragging the reader deep into Em's periodic bouts of hallucination. It's difficult to immediately determine, during each episode, whether is is delusional or merely trans-dimensional. The silver insects crawling over her boyfriend's plate at the restaurant, the swallowing brown smoke at the bowling alley, even the TV psychologist's hidden messages. Which of these are conspiracy, and which are artifacts of the mind?

Read more... )

Crossposted to hazelgold.net.

Profile

lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
lea_hazel

September 2025

M T W T F S S
1 234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit