The Overlife: A Tale of Schizophrenia

The author of this book, Diana Dirkby, is an Australian-born research mathematician who lives with paranoid schizophrenia, a severe brain disorder, as did her mother. The title, “The Overlife,” suggests that a diagnosis of schizophrenia can be the beginning of a new, worthwhile life and not simply the death of the hopes and dreams that preceded the diagnosis. This book gives a fictional account of a mother and daughter living with paranoid schizophrenia. We follow the widely disparate effects of this brain disorder on Sarah, the narrator, and her mother, Jodie. We also meet Dalaigh, Jodie’s husband and Sarah’s father, with his violent resentment at being trapped in a marriage he doesn’t want. By age eight, Sarah is Jodie’s caregiver and must negotiate her mother’s rapidly worsening mental health and her father’s white-hot fury. The weight of these adult conflicts on the shoulders of one so young seems impossible to bear.