Lucy's description of her early disease is particularly upsetting. Her family, overwhelmed by financial and emotional turmoil because of the stress of her illness, is not as visible as the part they actually played. Lucy's mother was a somewhat blurred figure who seemed to disappear by the middle of the book and portrayed her father as a particularly vague individual. However, the day-to-day trappings of illness force her to rely on her mother, whose relationship is one of the most disturbed, and moving. Early on she comments that when she was a child she didn't understand that her mother's anger was caused by depression, but she never elaborates on this observation. Her mother compares being brave with being good, and says: "At a time when everything in my family was unpredictable and dysfunctional here I had been supplied with a formula of behavior for gaining acceptance and, I believed, love. All I had to do was perform heroically and I could personally save my entire
Lucy's description of her early disease is particularly upsetting. Her family, overwhelmed by financial and emotional turmoil because of the stress of her illness, is not as visible as the part they actually played. Lucy's mother was a somewhat blurred figure who seemed to disappear by the middle of the book and portrayed her father as a particularly vague individual. However, the day-to-day trappings of illness force her to rely on her mother, whose relationship is one of the most disturbed, and moving. Early on she comments that when she was a child she didn't understand that her mother's anger was caused by depression, but she never elaborates on this observation. Her mother compares being brave with being good, and says: "At a time when everything in my family was unpredictable and dysfunctional here I had been supplied with a formula of behavior for gaining acceptance and, I believed, love. All I had to do was perform heroically and I could personally save my entire