Customer Reviews

Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a new mother who thankfully did not suffer from postpartum depression. I lapped up Martini's honesty at her birthing experience and at being a new mother. I felt the same way, underwhelmed, terrified of how dramatically my life had changed, and deeply angry at all the Internset sites, books, experts, friends etc. who let you know exaclty what you're doing wrong. Who are so preachy. It was so so heartening for me to read this that I praise Martini for her honesty.

The timeline of this book was kind of a tangle. I didn't follow many parts exactly..okay, wait, wait, has her baby been born yet? Is she still talking about when she was a college kid staying with her father, or are we back to the present. And the parts about the history of postpartum depressiong and how mental illness is treated in American felt very obligatory and tacked on, or patched in.

But the parts about her hospital stay, both for birth and for breakdown, were real and were wrenching. And I cannot overemphasize how freakin' refreshing it is to read a memoir, in this saturated environment, of someone NOT from New York, who doesn't live in New York and who seemingly has no connections in the New York-centered industry and who is resolutely middle class and didn't even go to an Ivy League College. And a memoir not written in workshoppy, sanguine style.

It's really good. I mean, maybe you have to be a woman and maybe you have to be a mother to appreciate this, not sure as I am both. But yeah.

will find themselves nodding in recognition as they read lines such as:

"I can be perfect and completely insane or good enough and sane enough."

Adrienne Martini weaves a tale of new motherhood,post-partum depression and family history in a way her readers will find comforting, disturbing, hilarious and heartbreaking. Martini spares little detail in writing about her brush with mental illness, yet she remains likeable and funny throughout the books' darkest passages.

Not only did I find Martini's book to be touching, thoughtful, incisive and funny, I found it instructive as a woman, as a daughter and as a member of a society that still has a long way to go in its ability to face and deal with mental illness in any of its forms. The personal narrative of the book is skillfully blended with observations on how mental health can be shaped by genetics and environment and how those around us respond to those changes. A fine read, and an important book.

It is really amazing sometimes how families can deal with an issue like post-partum depression for generations and still not really talk about it or remember it. This is what happened with the author's family, and why her severe PPD, that landed her in a locked psychiatric ward, came as such a shock. Something similar happened in my family with pre-eclampsia (toxemia). Although it had affected many, many family members, and was most likely the cause of death for my greatgrandmother just after giving birth, I had no idea this was the case, and my own near death from it shocked me. Things that happen around childbirth seem to be easily forgotten, perhaps lest it seem like we are somehow blaming the baby.

Martini is a wonderful writer, even if she didn't have such a tale to tell. She manages to find surprising metaphors and striking observations even for situations that have been written about often. I would love to have her as a professor.

Just a note to perspective readers---the hillbilly part of the title misleads a little. The book is much more a memoir about PPD than about hillbilly life. But it's a great title!

I saw this book discussed on the Yarn Harlot's web site, and because I am a fan of southern writers, I thought it would be a good read. I was right.

I think I am going to add Martini's line, "Like cellulite, dreams come easily," as a signature on my emails. ;)

The author/narrator had an appealing voice and lured me into her story quickly. I honestly hadn't plan to read the entire book, but after her troubles, I needed to know how it turned out.

I think this book would help anyone suffering from post-partum depression or mental illness, in general. I found her descriptions of her experience on the ward insightful and true. She gives hope to those suffering from depression that there is help out there--but sometimes it takes a lot of effort.

My onc complaint is that she jumped around so much in her story from time frame and relative to relative. It is not a linear story really.

Overall, a good read.

The author's experience with postpartum depression, as recounted in Hillbilly Gothic, is an interesting read. Reading about her breakdown, stay at the mental hospital, and subsequent recovery would be helpful for a new mother. Mothers with PPD are stigmatized and made to feel like less of a mother than they really are. Books like this will help break down that stigma.

My only gripes about the book are the parts about Knoxville. She waxes on about living in Tennessee, and I don't think that does much for the book.

That said, I really enjoyed her perspective on pregnancy, childbirth, and being a new mother. Not every mother immediately bonds with her baby. Not every new mother has a perfect birth experience. Many of us feel lost and lonely and confused and angry. This book helps show that new mothers having anything less than the "normal" experience are not alone.

I could understand Martini's experience one hundred percent having gone through my own battle with postpartum depression. Even down to coming from a family where both mental illness and the associated evils run rampant.

Martini's account of her Appalachian background and family's mental illness is not pretty. Her own descent into "madness" actually made me physically hurt for her. That's not to say she sets herself up to be pitied. Far from it. She recognizes that her story is a common one and because there is still a stigma associated with all mental illness, especially postpartum depression and its darker sister postpartum psychosis, it is a necessary story.

I can't say that I recommend this book to everyone - its a tough story to read. But if you do choose to read it I don't think you will be disappointed (and you might even be a little more understanding for having read it).

If you have or had post partum depression do not read this book. On a good note it will make you feel more sane but overall it is very depressing and dark.

This book was really not quite what I expected. The author races from topic to topic; most which deal with her unstable family history and these interludes are repeated throughout the book, but from different angles so you never quite get the sense about whom each character really is in her family and why they relate to the story. Surprisingly, to me, I thought this book really did not focus on the post-partum depression of the author. Yes, she speaks of it and gives a very vivid account of being on a mental ward for a bit due to PPD and added to this are excerpts from her journal directed at her newborn that seem to be thrown in with the mix as an extra or filling to her struggles to describe her story. But to say that she constantly cried about being pregnant, having her baby, trying to nurse the baby etc...really doesn't jive with me considering she lets on that she cries about almost every facet of her life, and has for quite some time. Hence, the need for anti-depressants earlier in her life.

Therefore, I'd say that this book really is about madness in that it makes little to no sense in the context that the author would like it to make sense in. She adds too much info about irrelevent items that occurred in her life (i.e. places that she lived, the history of the towns her family grew up in, what she was doing at school at one particular time or another) combined with the constant insertions of the tales of pronounced mental instability in her family, that the reader is left wondering what is PPD and does this woman really have it or something else? In fact, the doctors that are described in the book seem far from knowledgeable about PPD but that could be due to the author's wishes not to provide the reader with what actually went on during sesssions with her doctors or, perhaps, she never hammered down the definition herself. All the reader gets is a vague allusion towards something terrible happening to a woman following the birth of a child that might require hospitalization.

The book was interesting to me only in the sense that the author spoke of, albeit too much, her family history of mental illness and how it permeated every generation as far back as she could trace. I would not recommend this book as one to look at for tips on what PPD is like because it's not just about crying around the clock.