Excerpt:(page 65) "I open my sketchbook that I take with me everywhere and show her pictures of my dreams. I tell her how I fly around the neighborhood just like the floating figures in Marc Chagall pictures.I travel up the canopy of trees on West 148th Street, but it's hard to get off the ground so I have to wave my arms up and down really fast to get started I point to the picture of a horse and explain how I become a different animal every ;night -a cat,a bird a swift white tailed dear. I don't mention that in my dreams she is a predator and I am her prey. Or that sometimes she is a crocodile standing on two feet, trying to devour me whole.. Instead I tell her about my other dreams, the ones where I'm a knight who saves her."How do you survive living with someone who thinks that any given moment you will be killed, or raped? What do you if they were a gifted musician slowly losing their grip on what is real? What do you do if that person just happens to be your mother? Mira Bartok's memoir gives you an up close and personal view of
what's like growing up in the 1960's with a mother who tried to jump out of the window and later diagnosed with schizophrenia. My overall impression: I felt the author's writing was heartbreaking, poetic and profound . It seemed that she was able
to make her sorrow and pain palatable.Very difficult to read not because it was bad of course it wasn't but because she can tell you with precise detail just where things go terribly wrong as a child , who later turns
into an adult that is helpless to save the one person she cares about the most. The author also happens to be
a gifted artist as well so you will see artwork work included in every chapter. I recommend it but not to the faint of heart. I gave it 5 out of 5 stars. I would like to thank Free Press for giving me the book to review. Idon't get paid to review but I am an Amazon Associate.
