Reviewed by Charlotte Diel
““There are forces raging inside of you, Alice,” he said. “Forces that you can’t control or comprehend. Their battle inside of you provoked your recent episode. And they’re still fighting.’”
Alice is an ordinary American teenager when she begins college. She has friends, two parents who care about her, and a typical childhood in her review mirror. She attends parties and stays up late talking to her roommate. The early months of her freshman year appear much like any other.
But depression and paranoia slowly take hold of Alice. She becomes convinced that friends and former classmates are conspiring against her. She is misunderstood; she is “a grand being of immense power” who is always being watched. Her nights are defined by rushes of energy, and her grades rise and fall. What was supposed to be a traditional college experience is torn apart by hospital visits and psychiatric appointments. Somewhere in the storm, Alice ceases to be ordinary.
In The Mind Reels, Fredrik deBoer paints a raw, intimate picture of a young woman in crisis. No trial suffered by Alice is avoided as deBoer creates a realistic novel about psychiatric disorders in modern-day America, highlighting the holes in our understanding of the mentally ill. While spanning years of Alice’s life, both in and out of recovery, he never hesitates to zero in on the most revealing details of Alice’s condition. The result is a novel that is both rich and concise. As I read, I felt as though I was analyzing years of the protagonist’s life in pieces, as though her existence was a shattered vase. Sharp in some places, beautifully intricate in others, The Mind Reels asks us to contemplate the value of that which is no longer whole.
Alice stares down the barrel of her condition with tentative and limited support. Her best friend is often distracted by her own trials. Her parents don’t quite know how to talk about her condition. Her aspirations shift. She longs to finish her degree, to get a job that won’t ask too much of her. Perhaps to make some sort of difference. To manage her condition is to feel caged by it; to leave the cage is to venture out into an unforgiving and brutal world that will most certainly swallow her eventually. As I read, I became less and less sure of how she should live. Alice’s illness lines her life with both limits and possibilities, forever asking her to make difficult choices.
The Mind Reels is a bold, compassionate debut novel that never flinches at the big questions. It follows Alice as her mental health struggles bleed into every area of her life: from relationships and school to work and self-esteem. Through it all, it reveals the many steps we still must take to improve mental health care. As Alice faces difficult insurance policies, unhelpful doctors, and the side effects of medication, I was forced to imagine what life is like for the real Alices. deBoer pulls back the curtain on mental illness in our present culture and time, allowing readers to view it as a disease that is debilitating in its nature and poisonous in its reputation. During my time with Alice, I watched the normalcy in her life ebb and flow, sometimes disappearing completely, sometimes returning, but never fully restored to what it was before her illness. I developed a deeper understanding of what it means to live with a condition like hers.
Though its story is original, The Mind Reels does what all good books do: it generates empathy. It takes its readers to the depths of its protagonist’s world, making room for them to sit with her in her most vulnerable and intimate moments. In doing so, it builds a compassion that they can then carry with them beyond their reading experience. I will remember Alice, but not by her illness. I will remember her as a young woman, full of fear and hope and longing, just like the many other people who face a diagnosis like hers. I will remember Alice by the way she revealed, in stunning detail, the trials and triumphs of a life that is no longer ordinary.