Reviews for A Note of Madness

Adults often want teenagers' lives to be straightforward and protected. The trouble with life is that it's frequently neither of those. And one trouble with life for many teenagers is the prevalence of clinical depression. Indeed, levels of adolescent depression match adult levels, and any teenager in a developed country is almost certain to have a friend affected by it. When we want to understand, nothing beats a good story, and Tabitha Suzuma's A Note of Madness joins the list of good stories about depression. It's a confident debut, with much that's original, in well-controlled and unselfconscious prose. It uses none of the shock tactics of my favourite comparable stories, Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese, Rachel Klein's The Moth Diaries or John Marsden's So Much to Tell You. Yet its straightforwardness and stylistic restraint make it equally strong. Remarkably, it's not even particularly sad, yet it is very real. Flynn is a star pianist at the Royal College of Music. Mental illness strikes during preparation for a special concert. His horror at watching himself lose control is palpable. Yet this is also a book about growing up. One of the most telling lines comes when Flynn thinks back a year: "Was I really there? he wondered. Could that have been the same me?" Teenagers change greatly in a year, and the speed of change is often disorienting. Regret for lost childhood can hurt. But Flynn is also very ill. Although the story unfolds through Flynn's eyes only, the voice is third person; this provides a slight, but useful, clinical distance from his inner confusion, as we see his "madness" partly through other people's reactions. "Rami shot her a warning look with a brief, barely perceptible shake of the head" reveals his brother's thoughts, while Flynn's lack of reaction is symptomatic itself. The cleverest trick is that somehow that most unreliable of narrative voices, the mentally ill patient, becomes a supremely reliable one. Thus the reader knows much more than Flynn, even though we are seeing through Flynn's eyes. If this book weren't so compassionate, it would be a case study, and it is indeed a clear exposition of manic depression, or bipolar illness. We even learn the specific name, bipolar two, as well as some of the drugs that treat it and the risks of taking lithium. In other hands such information could be clod-hopping, but here it feeds our fascination and feels right. It would have been easy to provide an obvious cause from Flynn's childhood - cruel/cold parents, loss of a sibling, abandonment - but there is none. Flynn has kind though helpless parents, a compassionate and knowledgeable older brother, good friends, a stable background. The message is clear: depression can affect anyone. Flynn's ups and downs are told in detail. When he is high, pumped full of energy, we fear for him; when he plunges into lethargy, we want to drag him from bed, feed him, care for him. When he says, "Here's to never wanting to get out of bed again", we feel hopeless. But when his brother replies, "Here's to getting reacquainted with your feelings. Here's to being able to want, without being sure you're going to get. To risk being hurt and to risk being rejected. Here's to life," suddenly we understand something important. A Note of Madness is much more than a book about depression: it's about brilliance, fear, love and living. That is its achievement, and what makes it a hearteningly good read. Nicola Morgan This book needs to come with a health warning. It is so well written, that we almost become Flynn, the young music student. We almost go down into the dark spaces with him as his mental illness takes hold. Because of the age of the main protagonists, the novel will certainly appeal to young people who are in the middle of the hurly-burly of becoming adult... Suzuma accurately portrays for us Flynn’s torture. We really are sitting on his shoulder as he has sudden busts of energy which make him stay up all night, jogging through the streets of London, composing operas and revising for exams. We too want to veg out in front of the TV or keep our heads down under the duvet when the depression kicks in. As his disease takes a stronger grip, he senses the futility of life, contemplates taking his, and makes us look more closely at our own. The author has managed to capture the perspective of a young person suffering from Bipolar 2, better known as manic depression, in a much the same way as Haddon found the voice of the Asperger’s syndrome / savant in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. It is encouraging to see Young Adult Literature in the UK tackling some deep issues. This novel delightfully extends the range of what is available for young adults adding to an already rich mixture of chicklet-lit, gritty-but-everyday realism and fantasy. It really pushes the boundaries further than even the work of Blackman and Burgess and comes close to what is being produced in other parts of Europe. For me, this book was a real page-turner. I wanted to carry on reading – to find out if Flynn managed to come to terms with his illness, whether he ever managed to perform the Rach Three in concert, and, of course, whether he managed to get the girl... I can thoroughly recommend this book. I long to read another one equally as absorbing and fascinating. I hope Tabitha Suzuma will come up with the goods. Gill James Flynn's struggle with Bipolar disorder, or Manic Depression, is not only a compulsively readable story, but a convincing portrayal of a teenager's struggle with mental illness. Not only is it brave for Suzuma to tackle a subject that has up until relatively recently been a taboo area, especially for young readers, but she has managed it with such style and compassion that the novel does not end up being about an 'issue' but about a set of people that the reader is able to feel for and relate to. The majority of the book is a flashback, after a prologue in which an older Flynn sits in a psychiatrist's office thinking through the question, 'How did it all begin?' This initial insight into the fact that despite ten years having passed, Flynn is still struggling with his illness lends a somewhat dismal, if never-the-less realistic, air to the book. The journey the reader is then taken on in order to try to answer the initial question mirrors Flynn's extreme feeling of highs and lows, never quite reaching a resolution. This feeling of there never really being a 'solution' is not as difficult as it may seem and certainly not a reason for dismissing the book as unsuitable for teenage readers. Indeed, it is somewhat refreshing to find that there is no identifiable cause for Flynn's illness; no social 'ill' or family trauma to blame that carries warning messages for us all. A Note of Madness is a simply, but beautifully written story about a loving family who rally round to support and care for Flynn who has an incurable, but treatable illness. There is enough in the book for all teenagers to engage with, whether they have come into contact with metal illness or not. The depiction of student life is realistic rather than stereotypical and the supporting characters are both funny and caring. Indeed anyone who enjoys playing an instrument would enjoy the depiction of endless practices, tutorials and sheer musicianship that Suzuma paints so well. Dani Compton Perhaps Beethoven and Schumann are the origins of the association of genius and madness - that to be supremely gifted is to be borderline insane - in the same way that Van Gogh is remembered for his insanity by people who can barely identify his paintings. This portrait of a talented young musician, while a compulsively readable story, is also a clear-sighted dismantling of the notion of divine madness on the one hand and on the other, the equally inaccurate view that depression is a self-indulgent surrender to the Black Dog. That Flynn's talent is for music is circumstantial; he could as well be an architect of an engineer - or a shelf-stacker. The fact that he is talented, the talent recognized and nurtured, that he is popular and loved, has no effect on his state of mind. Bipolar disorder is an illness that can be treated medically. What the writer puts across so well and persuasively is that the symptoms - the hideous enervating despair of the depressions, the frantic physical and creative energy of the manic phases, are unobservable to the sufferer. The memory of one does not survive in to the other. Everything is normal. How can he be ill? Why won't people just leave him alone? The correlation of the is that everyone around him is also suffering, unable to help, anymore than their sympathetic support would cure a disease or heal a wound. All they can do, in the end, is call a doctor. I also admire particularly the way Suzuma deglamourizes both the music and the madness. One is wonderful, the other terrible, but they have nothing at all to do with one another. Jan Mark, 2006 Intelligent, intense and refreshingly honest, Flynn Laukonen is the perfect protagonist for Tabitha Suzuma's beautifully-written debut novel. Entitled A Note of Madness, the narrative is centred around a perfectionist pianist, burdened by the expectations experienced when studying in a 'place where everyone strides with purpose'. Faced with the challenges of independent living and university life, Flynn experiences an awkwardness compounded by a range of emotions and actions which perplex both himself and those who care for him. Set at South Kensington's competitive music college, the story offers refreshing insights into the poorly-described condition of bipolar affective disorder, taken from both the doctor and patient perspectives. The transition between monologue and narrative is especially effective in portraying the difficulties, and indeed, the confusion felt by Flynn and those around him. The use of monologue enhances the immediacy, capturing the awkwardness that characterises Flynn's disposition. This immediacy, depicted in carefully-chosen jargon-free prose makes the experience of his 'madness' infinitely easier to understand. Words cannot describe how lucid and readable this story is. Given that one in four people in the UK suffers from a mental health problem, millions of us are going to either live with depression or a depressive personality sooner or later. A little understanding, (given the difficulties faced in getting emotional disturbances explored in a sympathetic manner) will go a very long way. Highly recommended. Sajini Wijetilleka Tabitha Suzuma has used the wonderfully rich character of Flynn to tell a moving account of young people and the effect of mental illness on their lives. Flynn has bipolar disorder, which is only diagnosed during the story. As his life starts to unravel we are at first not sure why the talented pianist, who is a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London, is behaving in such an erratic way. Life is busy for Flynn anyway; he lives with a flatmate in London and has a busy schedule of lectures and practice with exams looming. His Professor wants him to play at the Royal Albert Hall to represent the Academy but this adds yet another pressure to a young man who will soon be at breaking point. The third person narration gives the reader a broad perspective of all the elements of Flynn's life; from his friendships, his family relationships, his passion for music (which almost becomes his undoing) and his reflections on how difficult emotional development can be for many young people as they venture out into the adult world and form their own personal relationships. We see the full effects of bipolar disorder from the early signs: the refusal to accept the possibility of mental illness and the first attempts on medication only to give up because of the side effects; nothing is spared. Tabitha Suzuma ensures that the reader develops empathy as the story progresses. All who read this story will come away with a deeper understanding of mental illness; it will help us regard it with the same compassion as we would a physical illness. As the book touches on some very sensitive issues, including Flynn considering taking his own life, it is best suited to older adolescents. Claire Russell A passionately emotive novel, full of anguish and turmoil for Flynn, who finds out he is suffering from manic depression. Flynn is a high-flying pianist, studying at the Royal College of Music who, to the envy of the other students, is invited to play at a prestigious concert. Despite his apparent confidence, Flynn is falling apart beneath the surface and the pressure of the concert is too much for him, resulting in a desperate suicide attempt. With help from his brother and a psychiatrist, Flynn is able to start getting his life back on track and he eventually manages to play in a competition without falling to pieces. Suzuma’s uncompromising writing conveys the devastating and destructive nature of such an illness, which is shown through Flynn’s convincing personal battle. An excellent first novel. Leicestershire County Council Flynn is a student at the Royal College of Music, along with his friend Harry and Jennah they became firm friends and even went backpacking through the holidays across Europe. However now Flynn is suffering and he doesn't know why. He is constantly blighted by dark thoughts and suffers from periods of enthusiasm and highs before dropping into deep depression. To everyone else it is clear that there is something wrong with him, but Flynn can't see it - and that's not the only thing that he can't see.This book is incredibly well written and describes Flynn's mood swings and ups and downs. This writer is not afraid to tackle a subject that affects many teenagers and adults: mental illness. This book, through the story, tries to show how the idea of having a mental illness need not be a stigma that it has become in society.Thankfully this book doesn't shy away from the disappointments and problems. It is an ongoing battle for the person who feels they are falling apart and the listeners, relations and carers.I really got the impression of the characters: they come from the page in a three-dimensional form and I could almost imagine the looks on their faces and the smile that is vividly described of Jennah. The gradual process of falling apart and rebuilding and the patterns and cycles are explored through this wonderful storytelling. If you want something to make you think with great characters, then I cannot recommend this book highly enough... Rob Allwright