Angelhead

‘My brother saw the face of God. You never recover from a trauma like that.’

The opening sentence of Greg Bottoms book, Angelhead, about his brother Michael, sets the tone for this visceral, disturbing, and brilliantly written memoir. Greg Bottoms allows us into the lives of his family as their world deteriorates due to Michael’s mental illness. Bottoms takes us into Michael’s head by using techniques that reflect what Michael was going through at the time, rather than the narrator relaying events through his own perception.  He doesn’t say, ‘My brother thought he saw the face of God’ and this technique allows the reader to feel the immediate connection with Michael and the terrifying effects of his demise into schizophrenia.

Bottoms borrows language and imagery from physical and bodily functions. The reader is often confronted with faeces, vomit, blood, cuts, and violence. The graphic imagery makes uncomfortable reading at times. Bottoms describes undiagnosed schizophrenia as a ‘wrecking ball’ as he paints a powerful portrait of his brother’s mind as it fragments. The language mirrors the physicality of schizophrenia. The descriptions of those who have ‘fallen, shaken and supplicant, pleading, palms aimed heavenward’ are all the gestures that Michael displays. It is also the imagery of a family who is drowning, not knowing where to turn and what to do. It is also a shocking indictment on the health system in the USA. As the family flails about, desperate to understand what is happening to their son as the illness ravishes Michael, Bottoms juxtaposes the wreckage of their lives with the ever-present construction going on in their neighbourhood. ‘…shimmering over our neighbourhood of new construction sites…’  The references to the new suburb, everywhere is this book, work on several levels. The parents have worked hard to leave their working-class roots and move to where the ‘better people live.’ No amount of newness and upward mobility, however, can fix what is wrong. Schizophrenia does not discriminate. The aspirational classes do not escape. Bottoms opens the book with a scene from their new home in a new suburb. Michael is having a psychotic episode, smashing everything in his wake. ‘Shards of broken glass the size of human teeth spread over the floor. The lava lamp’s snot glistened on the new carpet…His feet bled, were completely red with blood, glass sticking out of them in different directions like shark’s teeth. My mother rang for an ambulance.’

Bottoms continually makes us aware of the loss of childhood for the other siblings. There is the constant juxtaposition of innocence (the normalcy of playing ball games, going to school, doing homework of Greg) with demonic behaviour of Michael. Michael’s diagnoses doesn’t come for some time in the book. As the hapless family grapples with his illness, the reader feels frustration with all the authorities that allowed Michael to fall through the cracks of a system that should have identified him as being at risk and supported him. As Michael displays all the symptoms of rebellion because of his illness, Greg Bottoms, at twelve years of age, starts formulating his own nihilistic identity. It had nothing to do with being ‘cool.’ He was angry and had no language to articulate what was happening in his family. Later, Bottoms describes his guilt which began the day he found out about Michael’s diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic. Years later he realised for the first time that it wasn’t Michael’s fault and this he found ‘nearly unbearable.’

Angelhead is written in a short, clipped style. The subtitle is My Brother’s Descent into Madness, and for the reader, the descent is swift and horrifying as well. The language and style mirror the fractured and chaotic mind of someone whose reality is fraying. This is a brilliantly written book and one that is not easily forgotten.