Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Laura M. Flynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2008

Charismatic, beautiful Sally Flynn was the center of her daughters' imaginations, particularly Laura's. Without warning, life as they knew it changed as paranoid schizophrenia overtook Sally. Whether it was accusing Laura’s father of trying to win her over to the side of Satan, or buying only certain products that were evil-free, glimmers of her mother’s future paranoia grew brighter as Laura’s early years passed. Once her husband left the family and filed for divorce, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest, and the three girls united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother had taught them in order to deflect danger. Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is a searing, beautifully written memoir of a childhood under siege and three young girls determined to survive. In luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It was 1975, and nine-year-old Flynn was sitting with her mother on the floor of their San Francisco apartment with a pile of money as her mother explained that the faces of these men on the coins and bills in front of us... had impact on people and events. Flynn's father had moved out a year earlier; her two sisters were at school, where she, too, should have been; instead, her mother needed to talk with her about all those faces on the money. This is how Flynn, a writing instructor at the University of Minnesota, begins her elegantly written story of how her mother had been an adventurous bohemian in the 1950s and '60s, before she became unhinged by what was later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. Family life became bizarrely unpredictable as her mother became attached to stranger and stranger notions. After her father moved out, mother laid out the new terms of our lives... staying inside, and cutting all our ties to other people... careful about what we ate, and what we wore. Readers begin to share Flynn's sense of dread about what her mother might do next, heightened by the disturbingly controlled calm of her narration. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* What is a child to do when the parent who’s the center of her universe becomes desperately ill? That’s the wrenching reality Flynn faces when she learns that her mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. The words were “long and strange and frankly, ugly,” writes Flynn, who was 10 at the time her father gave her mother’s frazzled frame of mind a name. “Even so, I had a feeling it was something I could hang onto, something I could rebuild my world around.” For years, Flynn and her two sisters, one older, one younger, played along as characters in their mother’s fantasy world. But when her seemingly innocuous antics (forbidding certain foods and making lists of good and evil things) turned violent, the girls’ father filed for divorce, then custody. Flynn’s haunting memoir vividly recaptures the San Francisco of the 1970s, an emotionally fraught era in which quirky behaviors were more likely to be sanctioned than scorned. Flynn’s ability to render the perspective of a child elevates this memoir from ordinary to extraordinary. From the start, readers see inside her impressionable young mind as she lives from one breathless moment to the next, grappling with scenarios that would level the most well-adjusted adults. --Allison Block

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First edition (January 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582433852
• ISBN-13: 978-1582433851
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Swallow the Ocean, January 23, 2008

By 

Dick (Woodbury MN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This is a moving and beautifully written love story by a daughter about her mother and her entire family. It is a must-read for anyone who has ever lived in proximity with someone who is 'walking wounded' as a consequence of mental illness, but is not ill enough to be hospitalized. In a most beautiful and moving way, Ms Flynn tells her story of growing up in San Francisco as her Mom descends into mental illness.
I was truly blessed with Swallow the Ocean only a few weeks after caring for and then burying a mentally ill relative who had simply worn out those who lived in closest contact with him. He couldn't help being ill; the relatives who weren't around for him could be forgiven for giving up on him. He was not easy to love.
Ms Flynn builds a bridge for us to help better understand mental illness and how families struggle to do their best under very trying circumstances.

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before you start reading, carve out some time in your day, January 19, 2008

By 

Sawadee Reader (Riverside, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Once you begin reading "Swallow the Ocean," you won't be able to put it down. I read it until 3 am, and I would have kept on reading it if I hadn't gotten to the end. This is just one of those books. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that the story will break your heart and then help you put it back together again.

This is a marvelous, beautiful book. The writing is stunning!

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book, and I don't like memoirs, February 12, 2008

By 

sarah (Boston, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I am not a big memoir reader- even acclaimed ones are usually too self-indulgent for my tastes. But a friend pressed Swallow the Ocean on me, and once I got started I couldn't put it down. It lights up many parts of your brain as you are reading it, and for some time afterwards too.