Amazon.com"Nineteen seventy-four was a bad time to go crazy," reads the gripping first line in this thoroughly unique memoir by Virginia Holman, a frequent contributor to magazines such as Redbook and Self. But despite that sentence and thesuggestion of the title (Patty Hearst is a metaphor here, not a character), this work of "creative nonfiction" is extremely personal rather than generational. As with The Liar"s Club by Mary Karr (whose Spartan but poetic prose Holman sometimes recalls), the strength of Rescuing Patty Hearst is that it finds universality in a very specific situation and story.
One year after the famous heiress"s celebrated kidnapping, in the midst of Watergate and the other turbulent events of America"s most misunderstood era, the author"s mother retreated with her two daughters to a rustic cabin in rural Virginia, thoroughly convinced that the voices in her head were directing her to establish a field hospital in preparation for a cataclysmic warthat never came. The book proceeds to chart Holman"s mother"s extended and heartbreakingly sad battle with schizophrenia, and its impact on her seemingly typical middle-class American family. The author"s response progresses from detached bemusement, to horror and revulsion, and to a warm understanding and acceptance without ever becoming callous, maudlin, or romantic. Her recollections make for a consistently riveting story, while leaving the reader with a deep and profound understanding of the true tragedies and frustrating complexities of severe mental illness. --Jim DeRogatis Book Description
In 1975, one year after Patty Hearst and her captors robbed Hibernia National Bank, a second kidnapping took place far from the glare of the headlines. Virginia Holman"s mother, in the thrall of psychosis, spirited her two daughters to a cottage on the Virginia Peninsula, painted the windows black, and set up the house as a MASH unit for a secret war. A war that never came. The family -- captive to hermother"s schizophrenia and a legal system that refused to intervene -- remained there for more than three years.
"What sets this book apart," the Hartford Courant observed, "is Virginia"s voice...brave, smart, tough." Reviewers nationwide have praised Holman"s "riveting," "endearing," and "wryly humorous" story of a young girl caught in the whirlwind of madness -- a girl who chooses a brainwashed heiress as her role model. Holman"s memoir vividly and brilliantly evokes the interior worlds of the sane and the insane and the delicate membrane in between. An essential exploration of identity, captivity, and love, Rescuing Patty Hearst will inspire readers" faith in the resilience of one family"s spirit to survive and thrive even in the direst of circumstances.
Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Rescuing Patty Hearst : Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad (Virginia Holman)