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Zig-Zag Boy

A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"By turns an eloquent meditation on the power of nature and a terrifying exposé of...parenting a mentally ill child into adulthood." —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

A compassionate, heartrending memoir of a mother's quest to accept her son's journey through psychosis.

One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach—gentle and full of promise—in the grip of what the psychiatrists would label a psychotic break. Suddenly and inexplicably, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach's world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family.

In the years following Zach's shifting psychiatric diagnoses, Tanya goes to war for her son, desperate to find the right answer, the right drug, the right doctor to bring him back to reality. She struggles to navigate archaic mental healthcare systems, first in California and then in her native London during lockdown. Meanwhile, the boy she raised—the chatty, precocious dog-lover, the teenager who spent summers surfing with his big brother, the UCLA student—suffers the effects of multiple hospitalizations, powerful drugs that blunt his emotions, therapies that don't work, and torturous nights on the streets. Holding on to startling moments of hope and seeking solace in nature and community, Tanya learns how to abandon her fears for the future and accept the mysteries of her son's altered states.

With tenderness, lyricism, and generous candor, this compelling story conveys the power of a mother's love. Zig-Zag Boy is both a moving lamentation for things lost and a brave testament to the people we become in difficult circumstances.

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    • Kirkus

      January 1, 2023
      A mother chronicles how her youngest son's struggle with mental illness affected her understanding of what it meant to be a mother. When Frank found her 19-year-old son Zach "tracing the wires of our defunct telephone circuit board" in their home because he believed they were under surveillance by "bad people," she knew something was wrong. Until that moment, Zach had been a well-liked, highly intelligent teen who had never showed any predisposition to mental illness. The doctors who examined him eventually settled on a diagnosis of schizophrenia, while Frank scrambled to find her otherwise high-functioning son the help and medication he required. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the antipsychotics meant to control his condition made other parts of his life much harder. While Zach contended with the difficult side effects--e.g., blurry vision, muscle spasms, and decreased cognitive capability--Frank dealt with the "mental illness trauma" of witnessing her son's decline. When he went off medication, the author supported his decision, not knowing that Zach was at the beginning of a stop-start drug cycle that, like homelessness and hospitalization, would continue through his adult life. Desperate to "fix my boy," Frank did everything she possibly could to assist him, including moving back to their native England in hopes that his father and the British health care system could look after him better than the American system could. The author's efforts only made her realize that sacrificing for Zach put her relationship with her beloved American wife at risk of rupture. Eventually, she found a measure of solace in a support group. "We agree that we are all mad, all disordered, all traumatized," she writes, "and our loved ones are no different than anyone else." As she explores the sometimes-painful limits of mothering, Frank candidly discusses the wisdom of letting go what cannot be healed or made whole in exchange for the gift of acceptance. A heartfelt memoir about family, mental illness, and unconditional love.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      February 1, 2023
      Essayist Frank's first book is a self-described ""love story"" with no romance. Rather, it reverberates with a mother's fierce love for her son as he battles psychosis. From the initial frightening moments of 19-year-old Zach's psychotic break, Frank intimately depicts her family's heart-wrenching experience, rendering the unimaginable with grace. Desperate to "fix" Zach, then advocate for him, Frank moves through her own reactions of love, resentment, grief, and anxiety, always tethered to her son's connection with reality. Years of Zach's fluctuating stability threaten to splinter Frank's relationships with her wife and older son as she ponders how much latitude is best for him. Is psychosis caused by genetics, brain chemistry, or trauma? Theories abound, but the more Frank learns, the more questions she and an often unsympathetic medical/psychiatric community have. Frank returns with Zach to their native England, where setbacks are compounded by the pandemic and lockdown. A recurring motif of elephant seals punctuates this crucial account, which will speak to other families caught between loved ones, mental illness, and society's judgment.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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