Book description
A powerful and compelling memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic
father, who hid his mental illness behind a charismatic
larger-than-life, gluttonous personality and found logical explanations
for the most bizarre ways of thinking. From the international No. 1
bestselling author of Sickened.
As a child Julie was close to her father. More friend than parent, he
would belt her into their tiny car and they'd punch through yellow
lights, scarf down candy bars before supper and had their own way of
making fun of Julie's mother in a secret language of eye-rolling. She
adored her father for his exuberance, and pitied him when he broke down
in suicidal desperation. But as she neared 10, a darker side emerged:
her father could switch instantly from squeaking out a tear as they
harmonized to "Hey Jude" in the car, to pulling his loaded
pistol on the black man that asked for change in the McDonald's
drive-thru as they waited.
The isolation that came with the family's move to the country saw the
wacky, unorthodox elements of her father's denied mental illness take a
back seat to paranoid fear. Her father would tell her any boy who
befriended her was just pretend-acting until he could rape her, and
Julie came to fear all boys and men. He fell ever deeper into paranoid
delusions that his daughter was sexually active, prostituting herself,
sneaking out at night to sleep with black men.
When Julie was 14 her father attempted suicide and was placed in a
locked psychiatric ward. Julie was made to testify against her father,
and when he was released he became convinced she had turned on him.
Julie became the target of his ever more paranoid delusions.
Julie left home before 18 but her father's schizophrenic behaviour bled
over into her own life: if she couldn't find the hairdryer, she would
check for signs of entry. When it later turned up, she would wonder how
the thief broke back in to return it.
Confused, lost and damaged from years spent as the only confidante of
her paranoid schizophrenic father, but determined to survive, Julie was
finally able to come to terms with her father. She was her father's
keeper, and always would be. Praise for Julie Gregory and Sickened:
'A terrific writer.' Sunday Times
'One of the books of the year.' Glamour
'It blazes with truth and anger… a true story of survival and
achievement against the odds.' Sunday Telegraph
'A remarkably well-written and affecting book.' Time Out
'This story of unfathomable child abuse is told with remarkable wit,
compassion, and courage. It's a work of beauty from a beast of a
childhood.' Augusten Burroughs, bestselling author of Running With
Scissors Julie Gregory grew up in Southern Ohio, and is the
bestselling author of Sickened. A graduate student in psychiatry at
Sheffield University, she currently lives in the United States.
