A memoir about anxiety, our minds, and optimism in spite of it all
Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards University of Queensland Non-fiction Book Award
Where do mental illness stories begin?
Anna’s always had too many feelings. Or not enough feelings – she’s never been quite sure. Debilitating panic. Extraordinary melancholy. Paranoia. Ambivalence. Fear. Despair.
From anxious child to terrified parent, mental illness has been a constant. A harsh critic in the big moments – teenage pregnancy, divorce, a dream career, falling in love – and a companion in the small ones – getting to the supermarket, feeding all her cats, remembering which child is which.
But between therapists’ rooms and emergency departments, there’s been a feeling even harder to explain … optimism.
In this sharp-eyed and illuminating memoir, award-winning writer Anna Spargo-Ryan pieces together the relationships between time, mental illness, and our brain as the keeper of our stories. Against the backdrop of her own experience, she interrogates reality, how it can be fractured, and why it’s so hard to put it back together.
Powerfully honest, tender and often funny, A Kind of Magic blends meticulous research with vivid snapshots of the stuff that breaks us, and the magic of finding ourselves again.
About the Author
Anna Spargo-Ryan is the author of two novels, The Gulf and The Paper House, and an acclaimed nonfiction writer and teacher. She was the inaugural winner of the Horne Prize and is the current Nonfiction Editor at Island Magazine.
Industry Reviews
'The magic in this necessary and beautiful book is how deftly Spargo-Ryan shines her light on life's dark materials to offer comfort and inspiration to the rest of us. A must read.'
Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer
'Anna Spargo-Ryan writes with the kind of searing insight and beauty that both shatters your soul and also pieces it back together. I hope she never stops.'
Clementine Ford, author of Fight Like A Girl and How We Love
'With humour, generosity and courage, Anna Spargo-Ryan narrates an experience that is so often impossible to put into words. By taking us inside therapy sessions, hospital wards, and cars, rooms and self-talk that act as entrapment, we are given an opportunity to learn, to empathise and to love. A Kind of Magic should be read by anyone wanting to understand mental illness, and for anyone with mental illness wanting to be understood.'
Kylie Maslen, author of Show Me Where It Hurts
'A Kind of Magic has achieved something quite marvellous – it is somehow both as funny as it is suffused with grief; just as it manages to balance its gentle wisdom with moments of wonderful silliness, and to convey something of the mental and bodily experience of psychosis and panic in a manner that’s neither abstracted nor voyeuristic, but rather vitally, pulsingly alive. And it’s a page-turner, to boot. This is a book brimming with character as well as life, all the more striking for the painful material from which it has been built.'
Fiona Wright, author of Small Acts of Disappearance and The World Was Whole
