Articles liés à Relative Stranger: A Sister's Story
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Part One: END
Same Time, Different Place
On the twenty-seventh of January 2001, while I was skiing fast down a mountain in France, my sister, Catherine, was dying slowly in England; in a hospital I didn’t know she had been admitted to, from a cancer I didn’t know she had, under an identity I had no idea existed.
Catherine was my eldest sister, the third of five children. I am the fifth and youngest. When she died, she was forty-seven and I was thirty-four.
Born into a well-off family, we five were an undoubtedly privileged lot. On paper, we could look pretty obnoxious. We grew up in a beautiful house with parents who loved us well. We were broadly educated, widely travelled and generally encouraged. When I left home, I had a good life. I went to university, made friends, went to parties, and travelled with a backpack. I began writing books, bought a house and had a fair number of nice boyfriends. Then I married a lovely man and had a baby. Certainly, minor things went wrong from time to time, and I suffered one fairly serious bout of depression in my early twenties, but apart from that I enjoyed great good fortune.
When Catherine left home she went to India for a year where she became seriously ill, suffered the breakdown from which she never fully recovered, and then vanished. After a fraught search by the Foreign Office and our father she was found but vanished for a second time. Some time later, she finally returned home to England, broken.
After that, she went to Oxford, first to a bedsit, then to Oxford prison and then to Oxford’s psychiatric hospital, the Warneford. After a brief ensuing stint in Holloway jail and a spell in Guy’s hospital, London, she went to live quietly in a council flat in Bristol. There she kept a private home. In the beginning, it was open only to the homeless and the vagrant; in the end, to no one. After she turned twenty she appears to have had no lovers and we, her family, were not encouraged to visit her. There were no holidays, no parties, no steady job and no children. Once, for a time, she owned and loved a dog.
During the last eleven years of Catherine’s life, the few requests she made for visits from us were invariably rescinded by her, and we never saw her alive again.
It looks as if Catherine and I began our lives in the same place but we didn’t. She had schizophrenia and I did not.
The Sort Of Phone Call Everybody Dreads
My mother was due to visit us at our house in Wales the next day. So when she rang I assumed it was to discuss the usual details like whether she would be bringing her dog, why she wouldn’t be driving through the centre of Hereford and what food she was leaving for my father.
Instead, she said, ‘I’ve got some sad news. It’s about Catherine.’
‘Catherine?’
My mother is a woman who always gets straight to the point.
‘Catherine died.’
‘Oh, no. Oh, Mummy.’
My husband, Andrew, was at our neighbours’ house. I phoned them and asked for him.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’
‘Please come home now.’
There was merriment in the background. Andrew was chuckling at something someone was saying.
He was distracted.
‘What’s the problem, darling?’
‘It’s okay, it’s not the baby. My sister’s dead. Catherine died.’
Catherine had been admitted to the Bristol Royal Infirmary over Christmas with advanced, inoperable cancer and she had stated, very firmly, that she had no next of kin.
Two parents, four brothers and sisters, each with spouses and children. No next of kin?
So, not surprisingly, the hospital never contacted us, she was forty-seven years old after all, not four; and there she died on 27th January surrounded by no flowers, no grapes, no cards and no relatives, which was clearly exactly what she wanted. Afterwards, the authorities went into her flat. Someone found some unopened post. Someone else opened it and found an address. Someone else put two and two together, although not terribly quickly, and eleven days later a Bristol City Council Registrar telephoned my parents.
Lucky, really. It doesn’t have to work out that way. She might have vanished altogether that last time. And there were some mercies, I suppose. At least there was still a body and a body means a funeral. And a funeral means a meeting of sorts, albeit one-sided.
Shock
Think of a wall made of tissue paper and a giant fist punching through it, without warning.
It felt a bit like that, if you can imagine such a thing.
Anger (and not a little admiration)
‘No next of kin?’ says a close family friend. ‘Wow. It might just as well be suicide, as far as the aggression of that denial goes.’
Someone else adds: ‘You’ve got to hand it to her. She always was a stubborn bastard.’
Grief
The world turned dark grey. It didn’t help that it was February.
Acceptance
What is there not to accept? You can’t rewind a death.
Relief
Relief was almost universally expressed when people outside the family learned that my dead sister was Catherine and not my other sister or me. Gratitude was expressed too, when people learnt that she had died of natural causes. Everybody thinks that schizophrenics commit suicide, if they don’t kill other people.
Some Things People Said When They Found Out
A neighbour: ‘You should look at it this way. At least you won’t have to look after her when she’s old.’
An old boyfriend: ‘Darling, I’m so sorry, it’s absolutely terrible, but you know what? Some people are made for this world, some people aren’t.’
A family friend: ‘At least it was only cancer. Just think how much worse it could have been with her being — well, you know.’
Various others: ‘Thank God she didn’t commit suicide.’
‘At least she’s in peace now.’
‘It must be a merciful release in a way.’
‘Well, you weren’t really that close to her, were you.’
‘How terrible for your parents. But it’s better in a way they know what’s happened to her, than that they die wondering.’
‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I thought she was dead already."
From the Hardcover edition.
Revue de presse :
Same Time, Different Place
On the twenty-seventh of January 2001, while I was skiing fast down a mountain in France, my sister, Catherine, was dying slowly in England; in a hospital I didn’t know she had been admitted to, from a cancer I didn’t know she had, under an identity I had no idea existed.
Catherine was my eldest sister, the third of five children. I am the fifth and youngest. When she died, she was forty-seven and I was thirty-four.
Born into a well-off family, we five were an undoubtedly privileged lot. On paper, we could look pretty obnoxious. We grew up in a beautiful house with parents who loved us well. We were broadly educated, widely travelled and generally encouraged. When I left home, I had a good life. I went to university, made friends, went to parties, and travelled with a backpack. I began writing books, bought a house and had a fair number of nice boyfriends. Then I married a lovely man and had a baby. Certainly, minor things went wrong from time to time, and I suffered one fairly serious bout of depression in my early twenties, but apart from that I enjoyed great good fortune.
When Catherine left home she went to India for a year where she became seriously ill, suffered the breakdown from which she never fully recovered, and then vanished. After a fraught search by the Foreign Office and our father she was found but vanished for a second time. Some time later, she finally returned home to England, broken.
After that, she went to Oxford, first to a bedsit, then to Oxford prison and then to Oxford’s psychiatric hospital, the Warneford. After a brief ensuing stint in Holloway jail and a spell in Guy’s hospital, London, she went to live quietly in a council flat in Bristol. There she kept a private home. In the beginning, it was open only to the homeless and the vagrant; in the end, to no one. After she turned twenty she appears to have had no lovers and we, her family, were not encouraged to visit her. There were no holidays, no parties, no steady job and no children. Once, for a time, she owned and loved a dog.
During the last eleven years of Catherine’s life, the few requests she made for visits from us were invariably rescinded by her, and we never saw her alive again.
It looks as if Catherine and I began our lives in the same place but we didn’t. She had schizophrenia and I did not.
The Sort Of Phone Call Everybody Dreads
My mother was due to visit us at our house in Wales the next day. So when she rang I assumed it was to discuss the usual details like whether she would be bringing her dog, why she wouldn’t be driving through the centre of Hereford and what food she was leaving for my father.
Instead, she said, ‘I’ve got some sad news. It’s about Catherine.’
‘Catherine?’
My mother is a woman who always gets straight to the point.
‘Catherine died.’
‘Oh, no. Oh, Mummy.’
My husband, Andrew, was at our neighbours’ house. I phoned them and asked for him.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’
‘Please come home now.’
There was merriment in the background. Andrew was chuckling at something someone was saying.
He was distracted.
‘What’s the problem, darling?’
‘It’s okay, it’s not the baby. My sister’s dead. Catherine died.’
Catherine had been admitted to the Bristol Royal Infirmary over Christmas with advanced, inoperable cancer and she had stated, very firmly, that she had no next of kin.
Two parents, four brothers and sisters, each with spouses and children. No next of kin?
So, not surprisingly, the hospital never contacted us, she was forty-seven years old after all, not four; and there she died on 27th January surrounded by no flowers, no grapes, no cards and no relatives, which was clearly exactly what she wanted. Afterwards, the authorities went into her flat. Someone found some unopened post. Someone else opened it and found an address. Someone else put two and two together, although not terribly quickly, and eleven days later a Bristol City Council Registrar telephoned my parents.
Lucky, really. It doesn’t have to work out that way. She might have vanished altogether that last time. And there were some mercies, I suppose. At least there was still a body and a body means a funeral. And a funeral means a meeting of sorts, albeit one-sided.
Shock
Think of a wall made of tissue paper and a giant fist punching through it, without warning.
It felt a bit like that, if you can imagine such a thing.
Anger (and not a little admiration)
‘No next of kin?’ says a close family friend. ‘Wow. It might just as well be suicide, as far as the aggression of that denial goes.’
Someone else adds: ‘You’ve got to hand it to her. She always was a stubborn bastard.’
Grief
The world turned dark grey. It didn’t help that it was February.
Acceptance
What is there not to accept? You can’t rewind a death.
Relief
Relief was almost universally expressed when people outside the family learned that my dead sister was Catherine and not my other sister or me. Gratitude was expressed too, when people learnt that she had died of natural causes. Everybody thinks that schizophrenics commit suicide, if they don’t kill other people.
Some Things People Said When They Found Out
A neighbour: ‘You should look at it this way. At least you won’t have to look after her when she’s old.’
An old boyfriend: ‘Darling, I’m so sorry, it’s absolutely terrible, but you know what? Some people are made for this world, some people aren’t.’
A family friend: ‘At least it was only cancer. Just think how much worse it could have been with her being — well, you know.’
Various others: ‘Thank God she didn’t commit suicide.’
‘At least she’s in peace now.’
‘It must be a merciful release in a way.’
‘Well, you weren’t really that close to her, were you.’
‘How terrible for your parents. But it’s better in a way they know what’s happened to her, than that they die wondering.’
‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I thought she was dead already."
From the Hardcover edition.
“Astonishing. . . . Mary Loudon sets out to learn the story of her vanished sister, but winds up finding herself. A haunting, harrowing meditation on the meaning of family, of love, and of madness. Memorable, lyrical, and unsettling.”
–Jennifer Boylan, author of She's Not There
“People as empathic as Mary Loudon are rare. Writers as incisive and clean are even rarer. Her loving, sharp, elucidating journey into the mind of madness is a testament to the power of understanding.”
–Norah Vincent, author of New York Times Bestseller Self-Made Man
"Loudon has "a novelist’s eye for detail – nudging the heartbreaking chaos of her sister’s terrible flat towards the transforming beauty of still life. . . . Vivid, true and moving."
–The Times (UK)
"One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, . . . . a brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life."
–The Scotsman (UK)
"Remarkable and very affecting, and a comfort too. Mary Loudon sees through the dark of insanity to the light of understanding."
–Fay Weldon
“Written with great flair, clarity, imaginative intensity, and extraordinary confidence and style. Honest and unvarnished and without mawkishness of any kind. Convincing, gripping and moving, it will deserve to be a triumph.”
–Jonathan Dimbleby
“[Loudon’s] book heaves with emotional involvement: our hackles rise when a man who runs a drop-in centre describes Catherine as a ‘shadowy figure’, precisely the sort of dismissal from which this account succeeds in rescuing her. . . . ‘I see a woman who didn’t lack friends,’ the author concludes, satisfied. Nor did she lack a sister who loved her.”
–The Sunday Times (UK)
“[A] moving memoir [that] describes how mental illness can break even the strongest bonds. . . . Relative Stranger reads almost like a novel of the well written kind. . . . [A] remarkable and powerful illustration of the value of every human life, no matter how it is lived. . . . [An] extraordinary story of ordinary people.”
–Scotland on Sunday
“An intelligent work of self-searching, self-reassurance and justification. . . . Loudon’s clear moral tone and determined purpose give her prose a swing and balance.”
–The Guardian (UK)
“This is a touching and revealing account of a life discovered after death.”
–Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
“One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, and never strains for emotive effect. . . . [A] brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life, showing just how much of a personality it can occlude, but also the value of what’s left.”–The Scotsman
“A perceptive and sensitive exploration of the judgments that society makes on the value of people's lives. . . . This book will offer balm to many who have loved and lost a person with severe mental illness, and challenges many of the myopic misconceptions and generalizations that are ascribed to those who live with mental illness.”–The Lancet (UK medical journal)
“Loudon is always honest, and her internal journey as she faces head-on her older sister’s illness and alter-ego is compelling. . . . Loudon has successfully confronted her demons in this book, and there will be many readers who can empathize. They may even take comfort from the writer’s experiences.”–The Oxford Times Supplement (UK)
“Loudon’s accomplishment here seems courageous and large. The world feels more alarming, but somehow wider with this account of an estranged, and strangely vital relative who lived in it, for a while.”–Times Literary Supplement
“Move this to the top of your reading list because it’s a gem, in which Loudon tackles the tricky subject of how you grieve for a loved one you barely knew...It’s a book full of questions — because isn’t that what you’re left with when you lose someone? — as well as a vibrantly honest account of raw emotions.” --Glamour
“[Loudon’s sister] Catherine was schizophrenic. With that nugget of information, the way opens for a wistful, we-have-recognize-the-devastation-this-disease-wreaks book, but Loudon doesn’t take that route. Relative Stranger: A Life After Death reads more like a travel mystery, undercut with bleak humour. . . . Beneath it all is Loudon’s admiration for the ‘family’ that did look after Catherine. . . . Loudon has written not just a history of the sister she never saw as an adult, but a weird travel book about a place that most of us, if we’re lucky, will escape visiting.”–Toronto Star
From the Hardcover edition.
–Jennifer Boylan, author of She's Not There
“People as empathic as Mary Loudon are rare. Writers as incisive and clean are even rarer. Her loving, sharp, elucidating journey into the mind of madness is a testament to the power of understanding.”
–Norah Vincent, author of New York Times Bestseller Self-Made Man
"Loudon has "a novelist’s eye for detail – nudging the heartbreaking chaos of her sister’s terrible flat towards the transforming beauty of still life. . . . Vivid, true and moving."
–The Times (UK)
"One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, . . . . a brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life."
–The Scotsman (UK)
"Remarkable and very affecting, and a comfort too. Mary Loudon sees through the dark of insanity to the light of understanding."
–Fay Weldon
“Written with great flair, clarity, imaginative intensity, and extraordinary confidence and style. Honest and unvarnished and without mawkishness of any kind. Convincing, gripping and moving, it will deserve to be a triumph.”
–Jonathan Dimbleby
“[Loudon’s] book heaves with emotional involvement: our hackles rise when a man who runs a drop-in centre describes Catherine as a ‘shadowy figure’, precisely the sort of dismissal from which this account succeeds in rescuing her. . . . ‘I see a woman who didn’t lack friends,’ the author concludes, satisfied. Nor did she lack a sister who loved her.”
–The Sunday Times (UK)
“[A] moving memoir [that] describes how mental illness can break even the strongest bonds. . . . Relative Stranger reads almost like a novel of the well written kind. . . . [A] remarkable and powerful illustration of the value of every human life, no matter how it is lived. . . . [An] extraordinary story of ordinary people.”
–Scotland on Sunday
“An intelligent work of self-searching, self-reassurance and justification. . . . Loudon’s clear moral tone and determined purpose give her prose a swing and balance.”
–The Guardian (UK)
“This is a touching and revealing account of a life discovered after death.”
–Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
“One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year. . . . Balanced, thoughtful, and never strains for emotive effect. . . . [A] brilliantly clear portrait of the havoc mental illness can wreak in a family’s life, showing just how much of a personality it can occlude, but also the value of what’s left.”–The Scotsman
“A perceptive and sensitive exploration of the judgments that society makes on the value of people's lives. . . . This book will offer balm to many who have loved and lost a person with severe mental illness, and challenges many of the myopic misconceptions and generalizations that are ascribed to those who live with mental illness.”–The Lancet (UK medical journal)
“Loudon is always honest, and her internal journey as she faces head-on her older sister’s illness and alter-ego is compelling. . . . Loudon has successfully confronted her demons in this book, and there will be many readers who can empathize. They may even take comfort from the writer’s experiences.”–The Oxford Times Supplement (UK)
“Loudon’s accomplishment here seems courageous and large. The world feels more alarming, but somehow wider with this account of an estranged, and strangely vital relative who lived in it, for a while.”–Times Literary Supplement
“Move this to the top of your reading list because it’s a gem, in which Loudon tackles the tricky subject of how you grieve for a loved one you barely knew...It’s a book full of questions — because isn’t that what you’re left with when you lose someone? — as well as a vibrantly honest account of raw emotions.” --Glamour
“[Loudon’s sister] Catherine was schizophrenic. With that nugget of information, the way opens for a wistful, we-have-recognize-the-devastation-this-disease-wreaks book, but Loudon doesn’t take that route. Relative Stranger: A Life After Death reads more like a travel mystery, undercut with bleak humour. . . . Beneath it all is Loudon’s admiration for the ‘family’ that did look after Catherine. . . . Loudon has written not just a history of the sister she never saw as an adult, but a weird travel book about a place that most of us, if we’re lucky, will escape visiting.”–Toronto Star
From the Hardcover edition.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ISBN 10 0385661282
- ISBN 13 9780385661287
- ReliureBroché
- Nombre de pages352
- Evaluation vendeur
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