Fig

TRIGGER WARNING: Self harm and mental illness

((also, I did not know that I can post "in the past" so I will be filling up the few gaps in time with other book reviews.))


Title: Fig
Author: Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

So. For some reason I thought this book was going to have some supernatural or folkloric element to it. (I don't know why.) I was very very wrong. 

I rarely put trigger warnings on books but this is one that had I known exactly what it was going to be, I would have not read it.

This cover is a lie btw, nothing in here about birds or sewing or leaving the nest.

This is the story of a young girl and her mother's plunge into schizophrenia. This is the story of what harm can happen when illness is not properly explained to children, and the abuses that can happen as a result of living with someone unstable.

Young Fiona lives with her parents out in the middle of Kansas. She is HIGHLY intelligent. One day, when she is six, her mother has a paranoid mental break. Her world comes crashing down around her.

Her mother is an artist with a high strung personality. She is used to her being very particular about the environment, about societies' views on things, and about being a little bit paranoid.

Now this is all worse. It's all going wrong and her mom attempts suicide, and is sent back from the hospital on all sorts of downers. She doesn't seem like the same mother and because none of it is explained and none of it is taken care of properly the young girl internalizes all of her feelings toward the situation.

She soon becomes woefully neglected, and attempts to act as her mother's caretaker as much as possible. Learning that when she picks at scabs and previous injuries, that it feels calming for her. That seeing the blood helps her forget the mental pain she is experiencing. Soon that too goes increasingly wrong. 

There is a lot of self harm that goes on in this book. There is a lot of unstable mental illness. There is a lot of rampant child neglect. 

It was a hard read for me (having experienced a lot of the protagonists feelings if not situations.) and a good window into how this sort of thing spirals out of control.

It was very reminiscent to me of the book "Push" (which was turned into the movie "Precious") but featuring a different kind of mental and physical abuse.

Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Fig-Sarah-Elizabeth-Schantz/dp/1481423592

ISBN: 978-1-4814-2358-8