An Audience of Chairs

 An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark

A well-written, gut-wrenching story about a woman trying to cope with losing her children when manic-depressive disorder leaves her unable to care for them. Some of it is very painful to read and I wasn't sure I could finish it, but as she started to get better and gain some control over her moods I stopped holding my breath and read on. 

Spoiler alert...sort of...not sure...

She had two very young daughters whose health and safety were compromised by her neglect of them. It wasn't that she didn't love them - she did, deeply - but her mind would get so focused on other things that she'd legitimately forget them and their needs. On one such occasion she left them unattended on a beach far from home for hours and didn't remember them until well after dark. Her youngest was 2 at the time. Her husband took the girls away from her then and was right to do so, but he shows himself to be a jerk by keeping them away from her for the remainder of their childhood.

It's fascinating to look at life from inside the mind of a person with this illness. Fascinating and heart-breaking. And infuriating. I had a hard time getting into it at first simply because I didn't like her. She has good qualities - she loves her girls, she's artistically talented and she usually means well, but the victims of her behaviour suffer and she doesn't care. I know that's a symptom of her condition, but she was offered help and didn't want it. She wouldn't take meds because she felt they made her less of who she really was, and it didn't matter to her that that decision affected other lives than her own. I found myself angry with her; I've been in their place and know the wreckage it leaves.

I was glad that as the book progressed, she did, too. She began to identify things that triggered her mood swings and was able to better control them. She made amends to a certain extent, and as relationships began to heal, the story came to a satisfying conclusion. I hope it's like that for many people, but what I've seen in reality leaves me skeptical.