Cirrus@Austlit

'I live near an ambulance depot. Without exception, I wake in the peach pre-dawn to an orchestra of rising sirens. I imagine all the individual worlds that have ended in the night, every person who has opened their eyes to find a newly minted corpse alongside them. Every day I wake thinking about a thousand deaths and still I reach across to my adults-only drawer and wish myself a good morning.' (Publication abstract)

A memoir about anxiety, our minds, and optimism in spite of it all

Where do mental illness stories begin?

'Anna’s always had too many feelings. Or not enough feelings – she’s never been quite sure. Debilitating panic. Extraordinary melancholy. Paranoia. Ambivalence. Fear. Despair. 

'From anxious child to terrified parent, mental illness has been a constant. A harsh critic in the big moments –  teenage pregnancy, divorce, a dream career, falling in love – and a companion in the small ones – getting to the supermarket, feeding all her cats, remembering which child is which.

'But between therapists’ rooms and emergency departments, there’s been a feeling even harder to explain … optimism.

'In this sharp-eyed and illuminating memoir, award-winning writer Anna Spargo-Ryan pieces together the relationships between time, mental illness, and our brain as the keeper of our stories. Against the backdrop of her own experience, she interrogates reality, how it can be fractured, and why it’s so hard to put it back together. 

'Powerfully honest, tender and often funny, A Kind of Magic blends meticulous research with vivid snapshots of the stuff that breaks us, and the magic of finding ourselves again.'  (Publication summary)

'The ocean smells of a layer of wet sand that has dried in the night, that cracks and buckles under bare feet. It smells of blood that’s drawn from walking too close to a sharp coastal grass. The ocean smells of a blast of cold air that tightens the skin, of salt-caked lips, of the slap of tarmac on the drive home.'  (Introduction)

'My mother had morphed into versions of all kinds of boyfriends before Jason. She'd been a cowboy boot wearer and a biker chick and a Liberal voter. She'd been a person who went to raves in the bush and a person who watched horror movies and a person who had to sleep with the fan on. They'd come and go, and she'd snap back to herself. But no one had shattered her the way Jason did.

'When her mother falls for some guy that she met at the supermarket, sixteen-year-old Skye immediately senses danger. Jason is charming but secretive, prone to fits of temper. He comes and goes at all hours. He has strange friends. Soon he has convinced her mother quit her job and come to work with him... whatever he does.

'When Jason persuades Linda that she and her kids should move into his place in Port Flinders - a struggling town in South Australia's Gulf region - Skye and her brother Ben do their best to settle into a new routine. But as Jason's behaviour becomes more unpredictable, and their mother increasingly absent, Skye finds herself forced to make decisions that will change all of their lives for good.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.