Unraveled Wednesday: 1/10/24

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers with a Hitchhiker picture that doesn't look much different than the one I posted last week. It's raining buckets and the wind is picking up outside, so all I have is a gloomy indoor photo. Even my attempt to make it a little more cozy with a candle didn't entirely work. But I've joined the second skein and will keep plugging along, dreaming multicolored Funfetti dreams while I knit. 

I finished two books last week. The first one was While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger. While I applaud Meg Kissinger for all the work and painful emotions that I imagine it must have taken to write her family's memoir of mental illness, I don't think it was an especially intimate portrait. Kissinger and her seven siblings were raised by a mother who was hospitalized for anxiety and depression and a bipolar alcoholic father. The author recounts a lot of family history at the beginning of the book but then steps back to tell the story of how the children grew up with drug abuse, depression, and multiple suicide attempts, but after each crisis "we simply went back to our old routines with no therapy or family discussions. None.” Kissinger became a journalist writing about mental health and with the help and cooperation of her siblings, pieced together their excruciating childhood.

I think this book is most useful for the author and her family. It would have helped me to better understand the author's siblings if she had included some of her interviews with them and their voices. I was left with questions about what roles genetics may have played and how much damage was done by parents who couldn't talk about things. Much of this happened in the 1970s when it was the norm not to discuss mental health. Even though I think many people now are better able to understand that mental health is just as important as physical health, resources are still hard to come by.

One of the things I liked most about the book was that the author chose to use a part of Mary Oliver's "In Blackwater Woods" as an epigraph. It struck me as especially appropriate for this sad memoir.

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

The other book was an advance reader copy from NetGalley and it was the perfect book to read during a recent winter storm. The Wedding People by Alison Espach is the story of Phoebe who has reached what she feels is the nadir in her life and Lila who thinks she is at her zenith. These two intersect at the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, along with other realistic and interesting characters, and the results are intriguing. This isn't a cutesy wedding story, but rather one about people trying their best, sometimes falling on their faces, and trying again. There is just the right amount of well-placed humor and great dialogue in the author's well-paced plot. I requested the book from NetGalley because I liked the cover and even Espach's acknowledgments were a pleasure to read. See what I mean about The Wedding People being the perfect book? I was not familiar with the author before reading this novel but I was glad to see that she has written others, and I've already started Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance. The Wedding People will be published on July 30, 2024.

What are you making and reading this week?