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Chilton, Martin (7 January 2014). "A haunting and powerful take on guilt, death and mental illness". The Telegraph . Retrieved 15 April 2019. Moreover, the experience that Nathan Filer has gained as a mental health nurse is apparent through his irreverent treatment of the subject matter. He does not idealise the staff or the patients, both of them have good days and bad days and this was remarkably refreshing. I could not deny that I did not gain something from the text, but it was also pleasant to find that an author did not shove his or her ideology down my throat to the extent that the book merely appeared distasteful. Even better was that Filer managed to inject sharp bursts of humour which cut through what could otherwise be an oppressive narrative to entertain and make the work somehow more real. Matthew’s problems started when he lost his older brother Simon. Simon was a child with special needs and Matt often resented him for being the center of their parents’ attention. But when Simon died in an accident partly caused by Matthew, he kept on living in Matthews head, a product of his guild and schizophrenia combined. The narrator, Matthew Homes, is 19 years old. He lives in Bristol. When he was nine, his older brother, Simon, who had Down’s syndrome, died during a family holiday at a caravan park on the Dorset coast. The exact circumstances of his death aren’t revealed until three-quarters of the way through the book, but from the beginning it’s clear that Matt holds himself obscurely responsible. When Matt was 17 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. According to his risk assessment, ‘he suffers from command hallucinations, which he attributes to a dead sibling.’ It becomes apparent that he’s writing on a computer at a psychiatric day centre when he interrupts his story to type ‘please stop reading over my shoulder’ in large capitals. ‘I had to put that in big letters to drive the message home. It worked, but now I feel bad about it. It was the student social worker who was looking over my shoulder.’ The book is supposedly revelations of how it really is to be schizophrenic and what life in a mental institution is really like and the author is a mental nurse so he knows. As the book has won many awards I was expecting the writing to be better than competent. Perhaps I was expecting too much having just read the searingly brilliant Man Booker prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings.
You may want to get a personal alarm system so that you can signal for help in the event of a fall. What I mean is, was the point of the novel about a person coming to terms with a traumatic childhood experience or about someone dealing with mental illness, and if so, why have these two unconnected elements side by side - what’s the reader supposed to focus on? I guess given the way the novel ended, it was about Matt coming to terms with his brother’s death, but what that has to do with his schizophrenia is unclear. Did he even need to have schizophrenia? Maybe the hallucinatory sequences wouldn’t have had as much weight if he did, but what a contrived reason to have that illness if that was the point! Nathan Filer's first book of non-fiction, The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia, was published by Faber and Faber in 2019. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year [21] and the charity, Rethink Mental Illness, named it as one of their Mental Health Books of the Decade. [22] It was also longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. [23]
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looking after your eyes with a sight test if you're having problems with your vision, even if you already wear glasses One of my more unique reads this one, I was wary of the hype around it, but really enjoyed reading it. I love the way the book is written, for a debut novel it's quite exceptional, it's an emotion stirring book and thought provoking too. The use of mixed formats, different fonts interspersed with occasional line drawings cleverly mirrors the ebb and flow of Matthew’s mental illness. Likewise, the narrative flits between different stages in his life, before Simon’s death, after Simon’s death, during hospital stays, independent living. This is an extremely honest account of one man’s journey through mental illness but there is also humour and great insight from Matthew as he sees how his brother’s death tore his family apart and left them adrift. National Book Awards 2014 - Overall winner announced". The Reading Agency. 2014 . Retrieved 15 April 2019. Nathan Filer (7 February 2014). "My Hero: Malala Yousafzai". The Guardian . Retrieved 11 February 2015.
The novel has earned high praise from comedian and former nurse Jo Brand, who said it was the best fiction about mental illness she had ever read.
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The novel was praised by The Guardian as "a gripping and exhilarating read", the narrator's voice being "dazzlingly rendered". [5] British Journal of Psychiatry noted that readers who are psychiatrists hoping to find themselves portrayed within the work would be disappointed, as they are "mentioned less than a handful of times throughout". However, they praise Filer's "very talented storytelling" and "fine description of psychiatry". [8] Matt's mental illness was not taken lightly in this book, and this is what made it feel so realistic in my opinion. It wasn't introduced as something that can be fixed overnight. It's a daily struggle for the patient and his family. a b c "Award-winning author Nathan Filer to receive Honorary degree at Abertay". Abertay University. 25 November 2015 . Retrieved 30 November 2015. The frequent reference to the medicine that Matthew Holmes has to take throughout the novel, and the disjointed and frantic tone of the sections wherein he misses or refuses to take his medication, create a strong sense of tension and of personal struggle that highlights Filer’s skill as an author in dealing with some very hard-hitting issues. Although, if I was to make one criticism of the novel, it does seem to leave readers guessing over a lot of the central events. However, this only serves to improve the overall effect that Filer no doubt intended of creating the narrative of ‘unreliability’ which this causes in many of the chapters.
Poi, andando avanti, ho capito che questo straordinario romanzo di Nathan Filer, diceva molto, molto di più. Having said that, Filer admitted a responsibility not to propagate myths around schizophrenia, a condition that is still "misunderstood and misrepresented", he said. "If you ask the man in the street you will still get lots of people taking about split personality, which is completely bogus … and violence which of course can be associated with it but more often isn't." The book cleverly gives you snippets of a story, then later on you get more of that story to give you the fuller picture, so there is a lot of a-ha moments, at least there was for me. I found it sad in parts, I really felt for his struggle against the illness that has hold of him, his moving between lucidity and delusion. Epically done. Somehow, I was really happy about the fact hat there was no romantic interest in this book, even though it’s technically a YA book, and I rarely see YA books without some sort of romantic story line. However, sometimes it feels like a romance is just thrown into the story for good measure. This book completely worked without romance (even though I would still say that it's a book about love... just a different kind of love!) and I really appreciate that! It's essentially the story of a young man's descent into mental illness, from childhood events to trying to live as an independent adult and on to life in a mental health care facility.requesting a home hazard assessment, where a healthcare professional visits your home to identify potential hazards and give advice From the start, Matthew’s placement in the mental institution and his slightly odd storytelling hint at the possibility that he’s not the most reliable of narrators. It is almost impossible to discern which parts of his story are true, and which are the product of a damaged mind. Matthew is only nineteen, extremely vulnerable, and his thoughts are all over the place, jumping through space and time from one short chapter to the next. But still, it’s his unforgettable voice that holds this narrative together firmly and effortlessly. Bath Spa University Lecturer Nathan Filer recognised at the Specsavers National Book Awards 2014". Bath Chronicle. 28 November 2014 . Retrieved 30 November 2014.
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