Review: Leave of Absence by Tanya J. Peterson

Leave of Absence 
Author: Tanya J. Peterson 
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Published:  2013
Pages: 327
ISBN: 978-1-59299-883-8
Source:  an advanced reader's copy was provided by Ink Water Press in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
Availability: Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Inkwaterbooks.com, Powells.com, iTunes, Kobo.com 

An empathic and honest portrayal of human beings stripped to their core and made to redefine reality and themselves, Leave of Absence reveals the emotional latticework of those suffering from mental illness, as well as the lives they touch. In this insightful and meaningful novel, Tanya J. Peterson delves deeply into the world of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and schizophrenia, and proves that fiction can act as a powerful vessel for conveying basic human truths.

When Oliver Graham’s suicide attempt fails, he is admitted to Airhaven Behavioral Health Center. Unable to cope with the traumatic loss of his beloved wife and son, he finds a single thread of attachment to life in Penelope, a fellow patient wrestling with schizophrenia and its devastating impact on her once happy and successful life. They both struggle to discover a reason to live while Penelope’s fiancé William strives to convince her that she is worth loving. As Oliver and Penelope try to achieve emotional stability, face others who have been part of their lives, and function in the “real world,” they discover that human connection may be reason enough to go on.

Written with extraordinary perception into the thought processes of those grappling with mental illness, Leave of Absence is perfect for readers seeking a stirring depiction of grief, loss, and schizophrenia, as well as anyone who has ever experienced human suffering and healing.  (from the press release)

My Thoughts

May 4/13 - At about the half-way mark of Leave of Absence I set aside the novel to take a few moments here to write about my experience reading this touching story.  With red-rimmed puffy eyes, my emotions are definitely heightened, learning of Oliver's story and what brought him to this point of his life.  When a story is so well told that the reader, from chapter one, experiences such an emotional connection with the characters therein, I have to say the author has achieved what some cannot....that sought after but not easily accomplished connection that draws the reader in to the lives of the characters, making them come alive and their emotions mirrored within the reader.  That, thus far, is what Tanya J. Peterson has done in Leave of Absence.  I am empathizing with Oliver and Penelope and William;  I have cried, I have smiled,  I feel of them.  Leave of Absence is powerfully written.

"Oliver knew deep in his heart that he would never, ever be better."

Oliver's depression and post-traumatic stress disorder stem from the devastating deaths of his wife and three year old son.  A depression so deep that it has taken away all desire to live and replaced it with a yearning to end his life so he might be with them again has overwhelmed Oliver.   Faced with survivor's guilt as well....if only he'd gone to the park with them, then he could have saved them....was a common thread of thought Oliver experienced.  His entire world had capsized and he could find no reason to carry on.

Enter Airhaven Behavioral Health Center, the facility to which Oliver is taken after surviving his suicide attempt.  Here he meets Penelope, a fellow patient who was  diagnosed with schizophrenia two years previous, and her fiancé William (the most supportive fiancé one could possibly imagine).  Seeing Penny ostracized even among fellow mental health patients is unthinkable to Oliver and he quickly befriends her.  The friendship between the two creates a healthy support network for each, a highly desirable and necessary "tool" in coping and healing.  

Truly it is rare when a book comes along with a story that addresses issues of mental health and does so in such a manner that the reader is immediately drawn in, involving them through their emotional responses to the situations and especially to the characters themselves.  Leave of Absence is that rare book.  As noted from my entry above, I totally empathized with each individual within. Tanya J. Peterson narrates in the third person but it is as if Oliver, William and Penelope tell their own story.  Their perspectives are unique and compelling.

The issues of mental health, just like any other illness of the body, represent a daily challenge but there are treatments to help the individuals live their lives.  It is the author's hope, and mine, that books like Leave of Absence will help to remove the stigma attached to mental illness.  This novel serves to broaden the mind, so to speak, to erase previous notions of "crazy" and "dangerous" as associated with the varying illnesses associated with the mind.  It is Tanya's expertise in the field of mental health counselling that gives Leave of Absence validity.  Her talent as a writer, and her obvious compassion, breathes life into her characters and creates a kinship between them and the reader.  

Oliver's and Penelope's stories touched my very core.  I could not put Leave of Absence down.  Leave of Absence is one book that I would highly recommend as a means of understanding and building compassion and empathy for those stricken with mental illness, and for those who love and/or treat them.

About the Author

Tanya J. Peterson holds a Bachelor of Science in secondary education, Master of Science in counseling, and is a Nationally Certified Counselor. She has been a teacher and a counselor in various settings, including a traditional high school and an alternative school for homeless and runaway adolescents, and she has volunteered her services in both schools and communities. Her previous titles include Losing Elizabeth, a young adult novel about an abusive relationship. To learn more, visit www.tanyajpeterson.com. 

Guest Post: Author Tanya J. Peterson Shares Why "Leave of Absence" Needed a Voice

One of the characters in Leave of Absence is Penelope, a woman who experiences Schizophrenia. In this scene, she is lamenting one of the ways it has impacted her life: “I used to be proud of myself. I graduated from the University of Chicago and worked as an advertising executive at Anderson Fletcher.” She paused and hugged the beach ball against her chest. When she resumed, she spoke quietly. “But then I changed, and I’m not the same anymore. I had to take quit the job I loved. At first, I thought I could take a leave of absence, just a little break to get well and then go back. But I never got better enough to go back. I had to quit completely, and now I’m just a loser.” Tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed onto the ball.

I wrote Leave of Absence because no one experiencing mental illness should ever have to feel like a loser. I’d like to be one of those who is working to correct the existing negative stereotypes and increase understanding and compassion.

I possess a unique combination of experiences that I carried with me into my writing of Leave of Absence. I carry it into all of my writing, actually—the articles that appear on my blog as well as the new novels I will write. That I write about mental health is no coincidence, for I have experienced mental health and mental illness from both sides of the proverbial couch. Having been both a counselor and a patient, I have a deep understanding of how people can suffer emotionally in so many ways, how people can triumph emotionally in so many ways, and of how every human being deserves empathy and understanding. I use my many experiences to create stories that, while themselves fictional, are a very real manifestation of mental health and mental illness. It is my hope that Leave of Absence will help people understand each other more deeply.

I have a rather intimate relationship with mental illness. I understand it intellectually thanks to an intense graduate program, and that lends a solid factual background to my stories. I understand it professionally thanks to all the people I have counseled with in various capacities; in working with people, I have developed a real-world understanding of what people need in order for them to help them help themselves heal, and I weave this into my stories. And I understand mental illness personally thanks to my own experiences with it. I try to draw on all of these aspects to infuse my novels with not only facts but feeling. (As I reader, I love character-driven stories, so I set out to make Leave of Absence character-driven. I hope readers connect with Oliver, Penelope, and William!)

My own roller coaster ride with mental illness officially began in 2004 when I sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. Because I could walk, talk, and physically care for myself, I didn’t qualify for brain injury rehabilitation programs. That didn’t mean that I was functioning well in other areas of my life, though! Over the course of several years, I saw a psychologist for counseling, and when that wasn’t enough, I was admitted into a behavioral health hospital. The Airhaven Behavioral Health Center that is the setting for much of Leave of Absence is actually based on the hospital in which I stayed. The characters are completely made up, of course, but the physical description and other little details (such as Oliver’s hatred of the ticking clock in his room) are based on my own personal experience in the hospital. I was in and out of that hospital five times over the course of several years, and it was there that I was officially diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder. Understanding Bipolar I disorder and looking back over my life, I firmly believe that I experienced it long before that car accident; however, I was able to manage it until the brain injury threw everything into chaos.

So it’s on multiple levels that I understand what it means to suffer mentally and emotionally, how mental illness impacts every single facet of one’s life, what it’s like to live with the stigma and have people shun you both personally and professionally.

I believe passionately in the importance of bringing these issues it to light. When we learn about each other as human beings, when we take time to really listen and look, we begin to understand. Through understanding come empathy and compassion.

Coming tomorrow, my review of Leave of Absence.

Coming May 8, a Q&A with the author you don't want to miss!

The Bellwether Revivals

The Bellether Revivals
Author:  Benjamin Wood
Publisher:  McClelland and Stewart
Publication Date:  March 20, 2012
Pages:  428
ISBN:  9780771089312
Fiction - literary, Fiction - psychological
Source:  I borrowed a copy (ARC) from work.

Part Secret History, part Brideshead Revisited for the 21st century, The Bellwether Revivals is a page-turning, romantic, eerie tale of genius and, possibly madness; a stunning debut for fans of Sarah Waters, Donna Tartt, and Lauren Goff.

The Bellwether Revivals opens and closes with bodies.  The story of whose bodies and how they came to be spread about an elegant house on the river near Cambridge is told by Oscar, a young, bright working class man who has fallen in love with an upper-class Cambridge student, Iris and thereby become entangled with a group of close friends, led by Iris' charismatic, brilliant, possibly dangerous brother.  For Eden Bellwether believes he can heal -- and perhaps more -- through the power of music.  In this masterful debut, we too are seduced by this gilded group of young people, entranced by Eden's powerful personality and his obvious talent as a musician, and caught off guard by the strangeness of Iris and Eden's parents.  And we find ourselves utterly unsure as to whether Eden Bellwether is a saviour or a villain, and whether Oscar will be able to solve this mystery in time to save himself, if not everyone else.  (from the publisher)

My Review:

Stopping outside Kings College Chapel to listen to the music that wafts beyond the doors may have been his first mistake.  This is where Oscar meets lovely Iris Bellwether as she awaits her brother Eden, the organist responsible for the tune that enthralled Oscar.  Drawn not only by her beauty and undeniable charm, but by a world previously unbeknownst to him, Oscar quickly falls in love.

Oscar is an intelligent young man who works as an aide at a home for the elderly and he takes pleasure in his job.  He enjoys the relationships he has forged with the patients he cares for.  Estranged from his mother and father, Oscar may have been seeking a place to fit in, a place where he can leave his world behind with new friends and opportunities.  He is not shallow, he just seems a bit bored with life as he knows it. His association with Iris, her brother Eden, and their friends draws him into a world of love, mystery, and dangerous genius.

It is when Iris enlists Oscar's help in gathering evidence to prove the mentally instability of her brother Eden, that everyone's lives become more complicated.  As Eden becomes more obsessed with his desire to prove himself able to heal through music, we realize his genius is bordering upon madness. Eden surely is delusional, seeking recognition of his brilliance, and, as time and opportunities allow, his experiments grow more dangerous and tragic.  As the synopsis indicates, the novel opens with death, (though we aren't at that time introduced to the victim) and closes with death.  It's the in-between that is so intriguing as to make one put off everything else, including bed, just to see where the story will take the reader.

Benjamin Wood provides an intense well-researched novel in The Bellwether Revivals.  Wood explores mental illness, healing and faith, leaving the door partially open for us to decide about the capacity of music to heal.

An intriguing expose of the genius bordering upon madness, The Bellwether Revivals is worthy of your attention.  Note:  due to the subject matter and some language, I rate this novel 16+ and 4.5/5 stars.

Meet the author:

BENJAMIN WOOD was born in 1981 and grew up in northwest England. In 2004, he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the MFA Creative Writing programme at the University of British Columbia. During his tenure as fiction editor of Canadian literary journal, PRISM international, the publication was awarded the Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Benjamin's short fiction has appeared in several international journals, and his novel The Bellwether Revivals was shortlisted for the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize Sony Reader Award for the best unpublished novel. He is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, where he teaches and develops undergraduate programmes.