Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother - Softcover

McCloskey, Molly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1468307088 ISBN 13: 9781468307085

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2013

Synopsis

Then, as a young adult, Molly found herself panicky and drinking heavily--and wondered about her own sanity. She began to piece together a picture of her family history--and the story of how Mike, a gifted student and athlete, was overtaken by an illness that rendered him unrecognizable. Circles Around the Sun is a courageous and beautiful memoir that sheds light not only on McCloskey's family, but on the myths that all families build for themselves.

About this title

About the Author:

Molly McCloskey grew up in Oregon. She is the author of a collection of short stories, Solomon's Seal; a novella and four short stories, The Beautiful Changes; and a novel, Protection.

From Booklist:

Fiction writer McCloskey tackles the prickly subject of schizophrenia in this bracing memoir about her older brother, Mike. In heartbreaking detail, she recounts Mike’s descent from smart, handsome intercollegiate athlete to muttering, wool-capped, house-bound stranger. (As the disease progressed, Mike would also drop out of sight for long periods of time.) McCloskey attempts to understand her brother’s downward mental spiral, talking with those who knew him in his early life and reviewing letters he wrote to her at various stages of his illness. But she remains puzzled by his peculiar behavior and panicky that she herself might be losing her mind. I had the disconcerting sense that it was not me who was having my thoughts, she writes, but my thoughts that were having me. (For a time, while living in Ireland, she found herself drinking heavily, spending her days alternating between two local dives.) Throughout, McCloskey praises her mother as the constant in Mike’s life, a kindhearted woman driven, perhaps, by the vain hope that the son she once knew would someday return. --Allison Block

About this edition

• Publisher: Abrams Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1468307088
• ISBN 13: 9781468307085
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240