W-3

The voice is cool and the gaze is clear . . . a startlingly frank account of mental illness, and the contradictions and humiliations of life as a patient . . . akin to a fly-on-the-wall documentary.Martha Gill, The Times

A writer of terrifying power, who sees and hears everything . . . Not only is this a sane memoir of madness but it may well be the sanest, most mordant take on the subject I have ever read.Frances Wilson, Daily Telegraph

Her memoir, clear-eyed, with an anthropological, sociological distance, is a brilliant attempt to document life on the ward with clinical detachment . . . a wonder. Her prose is direct, unadorned, under-stated.Arnold Thomas Fanning, Irish Times

At moments dazzlingly and daringly written . . . Its author captures quite brilliantly the comical competitiveness of her fellow patients – who’s the maddest here? they ask, each one hoping to claim victory . . . and she is excellent, too, at delineating what we might call the secret life of the institution. The patients exist for the hospital’s sake, rather than the other way around.Rachel Cooke, Observer