Cirrus@Austlit

'It is a brave writer who tackles the subject of mental illness, sufferers of which still labour under the stigma of being “different”: most “ordinary” people fear and dread mental illness and find it hard to comprehend. But Stephanie Bishop, author of Man Out of Time, a novel in which the protagonist is clearly disturbed, is on record as stating that her father was plagued by depression for much of his life. Thus, she also runs the risk of readers taking her novel as a factual account, but it is definitely a work of the imagination, despite the parallels with Bishop’s life. In her second novel, the much-lauded The Other Side of the World, she also draws on her family background while constructing a gripping novel.' 

 (Introduction)