Mental Illness

Without any pretense, Meg Mason tactfully probes the challenging theme of mental illness through the complex character of Martha. Though Mason includes a disclaimer that Martha’s experience is fictional, it feels entirely real. At first, her behavior appears as nothing more than that of a disenchanted and ungrateful individual. It is not long, however, before the reader learns this is not simply the result of a difficult personality. A high school senior at the time, Martha vividly remembers her first crisis: the loss of feeling in her hands and arms, uncontrollable shaking, temporary loss of vision, disrupted sleep, lack of appetite, and above all, the terror. She portrays herself as “a small animal that instinctively knows it’s dying” (31).

Martha details her relatives’ reactions. Her mother thinks she is just seeking attention and goes from calling her “Hum,” an affectionate childhood nickname from the...