Poppy Shakespeare - Hardcover

Clare Allan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747580464 ISBN 13: 9780747580461

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2006

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Prize

Poppy Shakespeare is wholly unique — both an insider’s look at the madness of the mental health system and an outsider’s discovery of the power of an unlikely friendship, it signals the arrival of an extraordinary new voice on the international literary scene.

Who is mad? Who is sane? Who decides?

Welcome to the Dorothy Fish, a day hospital in North London. N has been a patient here for thirteen years. Day after day she sits smoking in the common room, swapping medication and comparing MAD money rates. Like all the patients at the Dorothy Fish, N’s chief ambition is never to get discharged. Each year, when her annual assessment comes round, she is relieved to learn that she hasn’t got any better.

Then in walks Poppy Shakespeare in her six-inch skirt and twelve-inch heels. She is certain she isn’t mentally ill and desperate to return to her life outside. Though baffled by Poppy’s attitude, N agrees to help. Together they plot to gain Poppy’s freedom. But in a world where everything’s upside-down, are they crazy enough to upset the system?

Funny, brilliant, and moving, Poppy Shakespeare looks at madness from the inside, questioning our mental health system and the borders we place between sanity and insanity. Written in high-voltage prose, original and troubling, it is a stunning debut.

Excerpt from Poppy Shakespeare:

‘It’s not that I’ve got a problem with mental illness,’ Poppy said. ‘It’s just there’s nothing the matter with me. Do you know what I’m saying?’

‘I wouldn’t worry bout that,’ I said. ‘They must think you’s mad or you wouldn’t be here. Candid Headphones don’t reckon she’s mad. Never stopped her,’ I said. . . .

‘Poppy?’ I said, cause I got to say it. Be like watching a blind man walk under a bus. ‘You know what you said bout not thinking you’s mad?’

‘Yes,’ she said, like what of it?

‘Well I wouldn’t say nothing to them about that,’ I told her. ‘Not at the moment. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I ain’t saying nothing. It’s just the doctors, you never know. They might decide to pick up on it. I mean, it’s up to you, do you know what I’m saying, but maybe if you stick to your other symptoms.’
From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

About the Author

Clare Allan lives in London. This is her first novel.
From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1. How it all begun

I'm not being funny, but you can't blame me for what happened. All I done was try and help Poppy out. Same as I would of anyone, ain't my fault is it, do you know what I'm saying, not making like Mother Teresa, but that's how I am.

It weren't like you realised anyway, not at the time, not that first Monday morning. It weren't like you seen it all then and there when Poppy come stropping in them doors with her six-inch skirt and her twelve-inch heels; it weren't like you seen it all laid out, the whole fucking shit of the next six months, like a trailer, do you know what I'm saying, the whole fucking shit of the rest of our lives, which the way I'm feeling, do you know what I'm saying, most probably come down to the same.

Poppy Shakespeare, that was her name. She got long shiny hair like an advert. `Shakespeare?' I said when Tony told me. `Fuckin'ell bet she's smart.'

Tony smiled at the carpet, like this flicker of a smile, like a lighter running low on fluid.

`So what am I s'posed to show her?' I said. `I don't know nothing, do I,' I said.

`Just show her around the place,' he said. `Introduce her to people, that sort of thing.'

`Nah,' I said and I shaken my head. `Ain't up to it, Tony. Sorry; I'm not. Does my head in, that sort of thing. What you asking me for?' I said.

But Jesus, if you'd of heard him go on! Weren't nobody else would do, he said. Weren't nobody else in the world, he said, not Astrid Arsewipe -- couldn't argue with that -- not Middle-Class Michael, not no one at all, alive or dead or both or neither, known as much about dribbling as I did.
2. How Tony Balaclava got a point

Fact is I been dribbling since before I was even born. My mum was a dribbler and her mum as well, 'cept she never seen her hardly, grown up in a home while they scooped out bits of her mother's brain, like a tater, taken the bad bits out, till she never even knew she got a daughter no more and all she could do was dribble and shit, and one time I seen her, went with my mum, and it done my head in a bit to be honest, all humps and hollows and whispy white hair but afterwards Mum said what the fuck. `Come on, N,' she said, `let's what the fuck!' and we gone to this massive like stately home except it weren't it was a hotel, but that's what you'd think, you'd think, Brideshead Refuckingvisited, which my mum loved that programme, give her ideas, and she gets us this room like the size of a church, starts ordering salmon and champagne and shit and dancing around in her underwear, which I don't know why she was down to that but she was, I remember it certain. And then I remember the knock at the door, she was twirling her tights round her head at the time, and policemen and handcuffs and, `You come with me, love. Your mum will be fine; she's just not very well.' Like news to me, do you know what I'm saying, and I give her `Fuck off!' and wriggled her arm off my shoulders.

When Mum weren't twirling her tights round her head, she was hanging off bridges and slashing her arms and swallowing pills by the bottle and shit, till one Tuesday evening 6.15, Mill Hill East station, not that it matters, she jumped in front of a train and that was the end of it.

When I weren't living with Mum I got fostered out, or I stayed down Sunshine House which was better 'cause none of the staff give a fuck, and you done what you wanted. Back then we was into sniffing glue and the longer you sniffed, like the harder you was, and this one time it's me against Nasser the Nose and everyone's cheering, do you know what I'm saying, and the next thing I know I come round six months later playing pool on the caged-in balcony of this unit for fucked-up kids.

After that it was like I never looked back. By thirteen I been diagnosed with everything in the book. They had to start making up new disorders, just to have me covered, then three days before I turned seventeen, they shipped me up to the Abaddon to start my first six-month section.

Don't get me wrong. I ain't after the sympathy vote. The only reason I'm telling you this is just to prove how for once in his life Tony weren't talking out of his arse; he got a point and a fair enough point and in the end I had to admit, weren't no one better qualified to show Poppy round than me.
3. A bit about the Dorothy Fish and the Abaddon and stuff like that you can skip if you been there already

At the time all this happened I was going to the Dorothy Fish, which in case you don't know is a day hospital, and in case you don't know what one of them is, it's this place where you go there every day and when it shuts at half-four you go back down the hill to your flat on the Darkwoods Estate.

Most probably you's wanting the history as well, like why did they call it the Dorothy Fish, but I ain't going into none of that on account of I don't know. Middle-Class Michael said they called it after this lady or something, `The widow of Thompson Fish,' he said, `the haulage man,' like you ought to know, who give all her money to dribblers when she fallen out with her daughter. Rosetta said she'd heard they'd called it after this nurse, like a tribute. But Astrid said bollocks to both of them. Everyone knew Dot Fish, she said, she was manageress down the Kwik Kleen launderette, got stabbed to death and stuffed in the spin drier when a customer mistaken her for a tiger. Sue thought it must be an anagram and she used to get Verna to try and crack it, but they never got further than `history' and some shit that didn't work out.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0747580464
• ISBN 13: 9780747580461
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352