Gavin Extence
Hachette
Otago Daily Times, May 16th 2015
The mirror world in the title of Gavin Extence’s second novel refers to the sense of slipping into an alternative reality that accompanies the onset of mental illness. For freelance journalist Abby Williams, this transition occurs when she finds her next-door neighbour’s dead body sitting at the kitchen table of his flat.
Not that she recognises this at the time; indeed she ends up using the experience as the basis for a successful, if provocative article in The Observer. But this flowering of inspiration slowly transitions into an uncontrollable and increasingly florid hypomanic episode that leaves her debt-ridden, hospitalised with suicidal depression, and contemplating the ruins of several relationships, including that with her boyfriend. The remainder of the novel deals with how she manages to regain both her internal and external balance and repair the damage the illness has wrought.
Abby is a clever, humorous and resilience narrator who very clearly evokes the highs and lows of the illness, including the intense creativity and energy the that accompanies the manic upswing as well as crushing fall at the other end. Extence, who is himself bipolar, also relates his own experience of hypomania in an afterward that is every bit as honest and interesting as Abby’s story. Whilst I was less convinced by the scenes set in the hospital than by the rest of the story (Extence has never been ill enough to need inpatient treatment), it is still a thought-provoking and accessible insight into a topic many people struggle to understand. And, perhaps even more importantly, it is a story that that will be accessible to an audience that might otherwise hesitate to pick up a novel about mental illness.
https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/thought-provoking-insight-mental-illness
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