Customer Reviews

A-Metrical Techniques of a Schizophrenic

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P. D. Mackay's novel about schizophrenia and the startlingly strange, even funny life of a professionally ill man, is a work of heroism and insight. From beginning to the criminal finale, the book percolates with verve, vim, and mettle that rewrites the disease with hilarious and often flip action. Where any sufferer of this mental disorder might dive into the abyss in search of the dark flow of being, Mackay sets his character on the opposite rout, one in which Tony tells his own, much funnier tale. If "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is the standard with which to gage the delusion so often a part of this illness, Mackay raises the bar, over which the poetic and surreal leap with complete abandon. It is in this manner that Mackay overlays upon the fragile brainwork of a genius the genius's way out, a way where the world at large is made to answer for not only the problem of sick perception, but where Tony is able to play enough that he remains well. IF writing is medicine as much as it is catharsis, Mackay has intruded upon the fall of his character and heaved him up back into the light. We should all be thankful that this light remains at the core of "A-Metrical", a light that is both funny, ribald, and flip enough to turn the beast of the disease over and apply a poetic mouth to mouth so that we all live. Three cheers to the author, and ten to the book.

Mackay has done the improbable; turned an infrequently hallucinogenic confessional into a road map to common sense and spiritual decency. Shades of Pynchon. This sparkling book of uncommon prayer is loosely disguised as a dark comedy but giddily bursts those confines with a refreshing and seemingly tossed-off eloquence, and an honesty that for once edifies. The writing is crystalline even as it lurches forward in headlong fits of truly (and at times laugh out loud stunningly) wowee prose. The reader is brought face to grinning face with what has been revered as The Abyss, but which is here shown to be a traversable gorge filled with colorful and only occasionally unnerving shadows. Read the book. It's a flashlight.

If you love words and love life, love to laugh and love to cry, you'll love this book. P.D. MacKay, who dances with words, has done something astonishing: given form to terrifying chaos and chronicled the process. I laughed until I wept, and sometimes I just wept. Read it carefully, listen, pause, and savor it!