Like crazy : life with my mother and her invisible friends /
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Atria Books, 2020Edition: First Atria Books hardcover editionDescription: 244 pages : illustrations ; 23 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781501199981
- 1501199986
- 616.89/80092 B 23
- RC514.M368 A3 2020
Item type | Current library | Home library | Collection | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Standard Loan | Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Biography | Coeur d'Alene Library | Book | B MATHEWS MATHEWS (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 50610022750207 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"Exquisite. Full of wry humor, tenderness, and compassion." --Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author
A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir about an outlandish mother and son on an odyssey of self-discovery, and the rag-tag community that rallied to help them as the mother entered the final phase of her life.
Dan Mathews knew that his witty, bawdy, unhinged mother, Perry, was unable to maintain her fierce independence at seventy-eight--so he flew her across the country to Virginia to live with him in an 1870 townhouse badly in need of repairs. But to Dan, a screwdriver is a cocktail not a tool, and he was soon overwhelmed with two fixer-uppers: the house and his mother.
Unbowed, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, road trips, after-hours gatherings, and an unshakeable sense of humor as they faced down hurricanes, blizzards, and Perry's steady decline. They got by with the help of an ever-expanding circle of sidekicks--Dan's boyfriends (past and present), ex-cons, sailors, strippers, deaf hillbillies, evangelicals, and grumpy cats--while flipping the parent-child relationship on its head.
But it wasn't until a kicking-and-screaming trip to the emergency room that Dan discovered the cause of his mother's unpredictable, often caustic behavior: Perry had lived her entire adult life as an undiagnosed schizophrenic.
Irreverent and emotionally powerful, Like Crazy is a darkly comic tale about the perils and rewards of taking in a fragile parent without derailing your life in the process. A rare story about mental illness with an uplifting conclusion, it shows the remarkable growth that takes place when a wild child settles down to care for the wild woman who raised him.
"Dan Mathews knew that his eccentric mother, Perry Lawrence, was outspoken, foul-mouthed, and, at seventy-nine years old, unable to maintain her fiercely independent lifestyle-so he flew her across the country (with a gay man as her escort) to live with him in a dilapidated Victorian townhouse in Portsmouth, Virginia. What he didn't know was that she was schizophrenic. Over the next five years, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, experiments in drug use, and an unshakeable sense of humor as they faced down illness, natural disasters, and Perry's steady decline. With the help of an ever-expanding circle of friends-boyfriends new and old, strippers, DJs, gun nuts, Evangelical Christians, and everyone in between-they flipped the parent-child relationship on its head, with the globe-trotting animal rights activist finally learning to slow down and care for the woman who raised him. But it wasn't until after a kicking-and-screaming trip to the emergency room that Dan discovered that his mother's lifelong tendency to go it alone wasn't just a manifestation of her free spirit but was actually the inescapable element of a serious and undiagnosed disorder. Witty, emotionally powerful, and deeply moving, Like Crazy is a warm and engrossing memoir about mental illness, reinvention, and the remarkable power of community. Lovingly told, Mathews's memoir is also a profound meditation on the joys and pitfalls of caring for an aging family member and of the remarkable growth that takes place as a child steps into the role of the parent"--
Excerpt provided by Syndetics
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Director of Campaigns for PETA, Mathews claims that being constantly beaten up in high school because he was gay made him tough enough to be an animal activist, and in adulthood he was tough enough to bring his independent-minded, outrageously outspoken 79-year-old mother cross-country to live with him in Portsmouth, VA. But it took a fisticuffs-fraught trip to the emergency room for him to learn that she had long suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia. With a 75,000-copy first printing.Publishers Weekly Review
Mathews (Committed), a PETA executive, lovingly and hilariously recounts sharing his Portsmouth, Va., Victorian house with Perry, his ailing 79-year-old mother. In 2008, the 46-year-old party- and travel-loving Mathews moves his manic depressive mother in, despite being hesitant about their relationship and his romantic future ("Who'll want a frantic vegan with a bad back, a deaf mother who hears voices, and a nineteenth-century money pit with an underwater mortgage?"). But the arrangement is a joyful one for a couple years: Mathews still dates--except now it's not party boys, but "men who love Home Depot"--and meets Jack, who's just coming out after years of marriage and eventually joins the household. Then Perry experiences a psychotic breakdown and is treated for previously undetected schizophrenia. She eventually tells Mathews and Jack that "I have to go... I just wish I could keep going awhile longer now." Perry, who had always dreamed of being a ballerina, dies just before Christmas 2012, and Mathews spreads her ashes in the snow outside of a local Nutcracker performance. Mathews conveys potentially heavy and gut-wrenching family crises with page-turning style and heaps of wit. This tender, beautifully written celebration of familial love will resonate with readers. (May)Booklist Review
When Mathews' (Committed, 2007) feisty, 78-year-old mother, Perry, moves into his home in Virginia, he expects to have to change his freewheeling ways. He doesn't expect to deal with her undiagnosed mental illness. Perry has maintained the self-reliance and bawdy sense of humor that helped her through multiple foster homes as a child. When she first moves in with Mathews, they throw parties, go to concerts, and generally enjoy one another's company (especially after adjusted medication improves Perry's balance following multiple falls). As Mathews becomes more of a homebody--not only to take care of Perry, but because he begins seriously dating a recently divorced, newly out-of-the-closet man--he notices strange behaviors from Perry, including paranoia, depression, and conversations with imaginary folks. He ultimately has to commit her to a mental hospital, where she gets much needed help and a surprising diagnosis. Mathews writes of many scary moments with his mother, but their shared sense of humor shines through in his writing, making this a funny, sweet, and hopeful memoir.Kirkus Book Review
Mathews, the senior vice president for PETA, chronicles how caring for his feisty septuagenarian mother led to the discovery that she suffered from undiagnosed mental illness. When the author's mother, Perry, developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, he brought her to live with him in Virginia. A self-identified "gadabout," Mathews worried about his decision. A quirky loner, Perry had a history of erratic behavior, and the author was profoundly uncertain he could manage the responsibility of caretaking. But from the moment she arrived, his footloose gay bachelor life not only stabilized, but also became more colorful. His friends--as well as readers of his first memoir, Committed--adored her sass and "avant-garde, pro-homo" attitudes. However, in addition to COPD, Perry suffered from heart problems, incipient deafness, chronic arthritis, and balance problems that sometimes caused her to fall. On occasion, she also heard voices. At first, Mathews believed that these sounds were the result of drug interactions and helped his mother cut back on her medication. Meanwhile, the author began coming into his own as the adult he never thought he could become, settling into a relationship with a man newly emerged from a heterosexual marriage. Perry's moods continued to darken, and she began struggling with the proliferation of the voices in her head. A psychotic break forced Mathews to commit her to a mental hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia. He continued to care for her until she died, seeing in her not a "tragic victim" but a "weary survivor" who single-handedly raised three successful children without ever "succumb[ing] to drugs or booze or violence." A playful and humane writer, Mathews drolly examines parent-child role reversals as he meditates on the meaning of watching a beloved parent come to terms not only with mortality, but also a devastating illness. Poignant, readable, and even fun despite the dark moments. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Dan Mathews was born and raised in Orange County, California, by a single mother who encouraged her three boys to bring home stray animals. In high school, he was beaten up for being gay and credits those rough times with helping him develop the thick skin needed to be an animal activist. He spent two years in Italy working as a fashion model and bit-part actor before returning to the US to earn a degree in history from American University in Washington, DC. Shortly afterwards, he began working at PETA as a receptionist and within a year was organizing protests. As PETA's Director of Campaigns, he helps increase awareness of the rights of animals through high-profile events. He has been arrested for his activities more than twenty times but usually gets released from jail within a day. Through a unique combination of sex, humor, and glamour, he has turned animal rights into one of the hottest causes of the last two decades.There are no comments on this title.