Inferno A Memoir Of Motherhood And Madness



  1. Inferno: A Memoir Of Motherhood And Madness
  2. Inferno A Memoir Of Motherhood And Madness

Inferno is Catherine Cho's memoir of descent into the hell of postpartum psychosis and her gradual return. She relates her confusion with precision, and her terrors with such honesty, madness has rarely made so much sense. Unlike Dante, she has no guide on her journey, only her memories of love and fear, shattered and infinitely recomposed in. Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness English ASIN: B082VHZJP1 2020 6 hours and 31 minutes MP3@64 kbps 180 MB Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to.

Description

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Inferno
is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it's also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. . . --The New York Times Book Review

Explosive --Good Morning America Sublime --Bookpage (starred review) When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip's end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward. The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience - of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.

Product Details

$26.99$24.83
Henry Holt & Company
August 04, 2020
256
5.8 X 8.3 X 0.7 inches | 0.75 pounds
English
Hardcover
9781250623713

Inferno: A Memoir Of Motherhood And Madness

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Inferno A Memoir Of Motherhood And Madness

About the Author

Catherine Cho works in publishing. Originally from the United States, she's lived in New York and Hong Kong, and she currently lives in London with her family. Inferno is her first book.

Reviews

'Inferno is a brilliantly frightening memoir about Cho's two weeks on the psychiatric ward, elegantly interwoven with tales from her past. . . .[Cho writes] herself into motherhood and into a form of sanity that does not leave behind the insights enabled by psychosis. '
-The Guardian

'Fascinating.... beautifully written.... This is a highly accomplished memoir. Cho deftly weaves the strands of her experience to create something striking and original.'
-The Times This piercing narrative about motherhood and a fraying human mind will slowly and creepily pull the reader in and leave a chill.
-Publishers Weekly (starred review) 'Completely devastating. Completely heartbreaking. Written in luminous, spiralling prose.'
-Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under'A fierce, brave, glittering book that charts with unflinching honesty the shift from one reality to another and the family ghosts that - without always knowing it - we all carry. I was drawn into Catherine's story but I was also drawn into her mother's, her grandmother's, and those too with whom she shared that time in a psychiatric unit. But most of all it offers hope. Even from that place of darkness and confusion.'
-Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry'Inferno does just as the title suggests, it throws you into the flames of the author's psychosis so that you are in there with her, fighting for your next breath. I've rarely read such a powerful account of madness. Gripping, chilling and ultimately hopeful, this is one not to miss.'
-Lisa Jewell, author of The Family Upstairs and Then She Was Gone

'I was hooked from the very start, by the 'dear reader' letter setting the scene for all that followed. It is at heart a love story, but one in which unimaginable, wonderfully depicted, mental torture intrudes. In sharing this pain, and exploring its cultural and other causes, Catherine Cho does a great service to the cause of breaking down stigma surrounding mental ill health. Above all though she has written a beautiful book.'
-Alastair Campbell'Utterly compelling and beautifully written, Inferno is one of the bravest and most beautiful books I have ever read. I devoured it in one sitting and loved every page.'
-Alice Feeney, author of Sometimes I LieMadness'This book is utterly brilliant: poetic, truthful, frightening, clever. I held my breath at both the power of the prose and the writer's unflinching honesty. Catherine Cho is most certainly a writer to watch.'
-Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness'A powerful and poignant book. The difficult and haunting brutality of both psychosis and relationships was so beautifully and honestly portrayed.'
-Bev Thomas, author of A Good Enough Mother

Conversation Starters from ReadingGroupChoices.com

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In an eerie, unsettling debut memoir about postpartum psychosis, Cho delves into her 2018 breakdown after the birth of her son, Cato. Cho started showing signs of distress when she and her husband, James, traveled from their home in London to visit James’s parents in New Jersey and threw Cato a traditional Korean party to mark his 100 days of life. As James’s overbearing parents questioned Cho about Cato (“Why wasn’t he rolling yet?”), Cho began losing her grip: she started suspecting she was under surveillance, her son suddenly appeared to have “flashing red pupils,” and she heard voices telling her, “Your son needs to die.” Soon, Cho was involuntarily committed to a psych ward by doctors, where she bobbed in and out of lucidity, tore at her clothes, and saw demons during her 12 days there. The author spends little time on the science behind postpartum psychosis (“the reasons for postpartum psychosis aren’t fully understood”), and punctuates her story with discussions of Korean culture and the pressure Korean families place on mothers and wives to be accommodating; her narrative culminates with Cho getting medicated, then tentatively reestablishing a physical bond with her son and accepting him as her own (“I remembered him... I was a mother again”). This piercing narrative about motherhood and a fraying human mind will slowly and creepily pull the reader in and leave a chill. (Aug.)
Reviewed on : 03/24/2020
Release date: 08/04/2020
Genre: Nonfiction
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