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Book Reviews of Hillbilly Gothic : A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood

Hillbilly Gothic : A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood
Hillbilly Gothic A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood
Author: Adrienne Martini
ISBN-13: 9780743272735
ISBN-10: 0743272730
Publication Date: 6/27/2006
Pages: 240
Rating:
  • Currently 3.1/5 Stars.
 6

3.1 stars, based on 6 ratings
Publisher: Free Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

2 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

reviewed Hillbilly Gothic : A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood on + 22 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This was a decent book. She has a great way of writing about Post Partum Depression from a funny perspective. It started out really funny, then got more serious toward the end. Not the best book I've ever read, but it was an enjoyable read. I'd recommend it for any mother.
joann avatar reviewed Hillbilly Gothic : A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood on + 412 more book reviews
"My family has a grand tradition. After a woman gives birth, she goes mad. I thought that I would be the one to escape."
So begins Adrienne Martini's candid, compelling, and darkly humorous history of her family's and her own experiences with depression and postpartum syndrome.
Illuminating depression from the inside, Martini delves unflinchingly into her own breakdown and institutinalization and traces the multigenerational course of this devastinting problem. Moving back and forth between characters and situations, she vividly portrays the isolation-geographical and metaphorical-of the Appalachia of her forebears and the Western Pennsylvania where she grew up. She also weaves in the stories of other women, both contemporaty and historic, who have dealt with postpartum depression in all its guises, from fleeting "baby blues" to full-blown psychosis.