by Diana Dirkby (Author)

The author of this book, Diana Dirkby, is an Australian-born research

mathematician who lives with paranoid schizophrenia, a severe brain

disorder, as did her mother. The title, "The Overlife," suggests that a

diagnosis of schizophrenia can be the beginning of a new, worthwhile life

and not simply the death of the hopes and dreams that preceded the

diagnosis. This book gives a fictional account of a mother and daughter

living with paranoid schizophrenia. We follow the widely disparate effects of

this brain disorder on Sarah, the narrator, and her mother, Jodie. We also

meet Dalaigh, Jodie's husband and Sarah's father, with his violent

resentment at being trapped in a marriage he doesn't want. By age eight,

Sarah is Jodie's caregiver and must negotiate her mother's rapidly worsening

mental health and her father's white-hot fury. The weight of these adult

conflicts on the shoulders of one so young seems impossible to bear.