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Sisyphusa
Description Sisyphusa is an allegory of depression and the mental health system as seen through the eyes of its main character and first person narrator, Odis Winston. Odis is abducted from a comfortable existence at university and taken to an institution called 'Sisyphusa'. He is told when he arrives that he is 'Weird' and that he cannot leave until he has been 'Normalised'. He has been fitted with an Earpiece which has a poisonous and malign voice, similar to his own, and which begins to torment his every waking moment. Encountering characters and situations loosely based on Homer's Odyssey and in a dystopian style influenced by Orwell and Kafka, we follow Odis's transformation from helpless captive to active rebel and leader. The book is imbued with dark humour and compassion for its characters and their struggles. It manages to be a satirical polemic of our own times while creating an entirely new world of "Aspirati", "Hysteria-Dominated Television (HDTV)", "I-Spy's", and "Climbing Pills." It explores Mental Health themes surrounding institutionalisation, dehumanisation, self-harm, stigma, suicide and media (mis)representation. About the Author Michael was born in London in 1986. He had a happy childhood, growing up in a loving home with his parents and older brother. He always liked school but was equally occupied with enjoying life with his friends and family and continuing his lifelong romance with Arsenal Football Club. After A-Levels, Michael travelled around India, Southeast Asia and Australasia for 6 months before attending the University of Sussex. He felt in his element being at university and living in Brighton. He was growing, working hard and making wonderful friendships. However, halfway through his second year of university, in February 2007, he had a very sudden and unexpected onset of what was later diagnosed as Anxiety and Clinical Depression and later still with a form of OCD. Within the space of a week he went from being a very confident and successful student to being unable to leave the house that he was living in with friends in Brighton. Michael had to move back home to hisparents' house in London where he has remained ever since. He has had various talking therapies and medications over the four years he has been unwell, some of which have been very helpful, others distinctly unhelpful. He began to read avidly after the first year of almost catatonic depression. He has also tried to learn Spanish and Portuguese and has taken up the piano. He wrote Sisyphusa over the course of around eighteen months initially inspired by a strange dream and by the anger he felt after attending a psychiatric day hospital for six months. Michael has felt a stark rupture in the way in which he has experienced life before and after his breakdown. He is no longer as housebound as he was in the first couple of years, thanks in large part to his Cocker Spaniel puppy Milo who demands constant walks and attention. He has fewer crises, and with the help of his family and caregivers he has learned more effective ways of managing his symptoms. Nevertheless, his situation remains very limited as hefeels unable to work or to resume his formal studies, nor does he feel able to be in contact with former friends from school and university or most of his wider family.But he's pleased to be able to share his work with a wider audience and to add his voice to the many thousands fighting against the stigma surrounding mental illness.
318 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 19, 2013
Take a sizeable chunk of Nineteen Eighty-four, introduce pieces of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, add a dash of Poppy Shakespeare - and you will still be missing several vital ingredients that the author Michael Richmond has blended together to produce his dystopian novel Sisyphusa. Influenced by his own emotional breakdown and a lengthy spell of psychiatric intervention, Richmond has created an intriguing work of fiction that satirizes Mental Health Services whilst, simultaneously, highlighting the disempowerment and stigmatization experienced by twenty-first century psychiatric service users.
Snatched from the local Liquidizer one dreary February night, Odis Winston wakes up to find himself incarcerated in Sisyphusa and categorized as Weirdness Grade 2. After months of seclusion he is finally deemed ready to embark upon a rehabilitation programme with the ultimate goal of being discharged back to his home and family on the Island. As the story progresses, the chances of Odis or any of the other service users ever being allowed to leave Sisyphusa seem increasingly slim until, having been slung down into The Pit - a pitch-black hole full of human sewage - he meets the mysterious Gwen who, driven by her guilty conscience, discloses her secret plan for a mass break-out.
Running contrary to any such ideas of escape stands the formidable Warden Serky, an epitome of humiliation and control. Ably assisted by the beast-like henchmen, she struts her stuff like Nurse Ratched on acid, brainwashing and humiliating the service users in the ironically named Team Recovery. A much more insidious sentinel lies within the service users themselves as they succumb to the process of institutionalisation: a passive acceptance of and reliance upon the hospital structure, which is much more likely to thwart any escape attempts than the three-headed monster that prowls the corridors of Sisyphusa.
As time passes, Odis's mind-set slowly changes as he begins to develop insight into the disempowering structures that underpin the mental health system in Sisyphusa. Identifying himself with the other downtrodden service users, he develops a quiet determination to redress the balance of power. Of course, despite a thin glimmer of hope, life in Sisyphusa continues to be plagued with tragedies, from the intimacies and tensions that emanate from service user relationships to the untimely deaths and suicides of a number of inmates. Perhaps the only realistic chance of escape is to follow the Flower Eaters' example and ingest the essence of the Ziziphusa flowers.
Throughout the novel, Richmond manages to parody the negative effects of what we still refer to as mental `illness' by introducing concepts such as `climbing pills' (mandatory medication crucial to the rehabilitation process), `Normalization classes' (where service users are cognitively restructured and taught to behave like `normal' people) &, perhaps the most insidious of devices, the Neuro-Function Reading Mechanism - or earpiece - which is stapled onto every service user's ear to deliver a constant stream of abuse designed to crush the individual's self-esteem.
As a narrative, Sisyphusa works well. I was hooked into the story from chapter one & the unfolding plot had enough intrigue about it to keep me interested right to the final chapter. Having been written by someone with more than a passing interest in mental health issues there is a passion that flows from the author's pen and drives the story forward. The characters & their roles have been well thought out and everyone from the protagonist to the smallest bit-part player are there for a reason: Dobbsy, Ella, Mr Femuz (who reminded me so much of Chief Bromden in `Cuckoo's Nest'), the splendidly-named Governor Shade, even Gwen's cats play significant roles as Richmond never misses an opportunity to campaign for improvements in mental healthcare.
Every so often, a novel is produced that highlights the imbalance of power between the so-called sane and the mad. Sisyphusa is a timely reminder, perhaps, that - although there have been improvements made in mental health services over recent years - we still have a system in the UK that devalues difference and stigmatizes and controls by way of segregation and medical compartmentalisation. For those who consider themselves to be standing firmly on the sane side of the line, madness will always be something they can point to as being suffered by the `other' - an unconscious defence mechanism often employed to deny their own emotional vulnerabilities.
Wrapped up in the hyperbole of Sisyphusa is an important Foucauldian message of a disciplinary power that is still enforced within our mental health system through various subtle methods of control. Richmond has piled Pelion on Ossa in order to capture his audience - but beneath those imaginary mountains lies a very real problem and a call to arms for us all. Please do buy a copy of Sisyphusa - I found it to be a fascinating and extremely worthwhile read.
Snatched from the local Liquidizer one dreary February night, Odis Winston wakes up to find himself incarcerated in Sisyphusa and categorized as Weirdness Grade 2. After months of seclusion he is finally deemed ready to embark upon a rehabilitation programme with the ultimate goal of being discharged back to his home and family on the Island. As the story progresses, the chances of Odis or any of the other service users ever being allowed to leave Sisyphusa seem increasingly slim until, having been slung down into The Pit - a pitch-black hole full of human sewage - he meets the mysterious Gwen who, driven by her guilty conscience, discloses her secret plan for a mass break-out.
Running contrary to any such ideas of escape stands the formidable Warden Serky, an epitome of humiliation and control. Ably assisted by the beast-like henchmen, she struts her stuff like Nurse Ratched on acid, brainwashing and humiliating the service users in the ironically named Team Recovery. A much more insidious sentinel lies within the service users themselves as they succumb to the process of institutionalisation: a passive acceptance of and reliance upon the hospital structure, which is much more likely to thwart any escape attempts than the three-headed monster that prowls the corridors of Sisyphusa.
As time passes, Odis's mind-set slowly changes as he begins to develop insight into the disempowering structures that underpin the mental health system in Sisyphusa. Identifying himself with the other downtrodden service users, he develops a quiet determination to redress the balance of power. Of course, despite a thin glimmer of hope, life in Sisyphusa continues to be plagued with tragedies, from the intimacies and tensions that emanate from service user relationships to the untimely deaths and suicides of a number of inmates. Perhaps the only realistic chance of escape is to follow the Flower Eaters' example and ingest the essence of the Ziziphusa flowers.
Throughout the novel, Richmond manages to parody the negative effects of what we still refer to as mental `illness' by introducing concepts such as `climbing pills' (mandatory medication crucial to the rehabilitation process), `Normalization classes' (where service users are cognitively restructured and taught to behave like `normal' people) &, perhaps the most insidious of devices, the Neuro-Function Reading Mechanism - or earpiece - which is stapled onto every service user's ear to deliver a constant stream of abuse designed to crush the individual's self-esteem.
As a narrative, Sisyphusa works well. I was hooked into the story from chapter one & the unfolding plot had enough intrigue about it to keep me interested right to the final chapter. Having been written by someone with more than a passing interest in mental health issues there is a passion that flows from the author's pen and drives the story forward. The characters & their roles have been well thought out and everyone from the protagonist to the smallest bit-part player are there for a reason: Dobbsy, Ella, Mr Femuz (who reminded me so much of Chief Bromden in `Cuckoo's Nest'), the splendidly-named Governor Shade, even Gwen's cats play significant roles as Richmond never misses an opportunity to campaign for improvements in mental healthcare.
Every so often, a novel is produced that highlights the imbalance of power between the so-called sane and the mad. Sisyphusa is a timely reminder, perhaps, that - although there have been improvements made in mental health services over recent years - we still have a system in the UK that devalues difference and stigmatizes and controls by way of segregation and medical compartmentalisation. For those who consider themselves to be standing firmly on the sane side of the line, madness will always be something they can point to as being suffered by the `other' - an unconscious defence mechanism often employed to deny their own emotional vulnerabilities.
Wrapped up in the hyperbole of Sisyphusa is an important Foucauldian message of a disciplinary power that is still enforced within our mental health system through various subtle methods of control. Richmond has piled Pelion on Ossa in order to capture his audience - but beneath those imaginary mountains lies a very real problem and a call to arms for us all. Please do buy a copy of Sisyphusa - I found it to be a fascinating and extremely worthwhile read.
October 18, 2013
If you think a book cannot be both humourous and sad at the same time, I challenge you to read Sisyphusa.
February 10, 2014
Michael Richmond has taken Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to its logical conclusion in his brilliant and biting allegorical critique of mental illness and its rehabilitation within the "mental health" system. Instead of forced labor, our modern-day Gulags force mind-numbing boredom; worse, patients are cash cows for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
Weirdness is the appropriate human response to our harsh and futile existence within a dehumanizing system of violence that not only forces people to their breaking point but also conveniently and profitably 'treats' their 'brokenness' as a personal failing. Those who exist within our world and can somehow act Normal are the truly scary and dangerous Weird ones—the inhumane, cut-throat wildcards to watch out for… or maybe just those sorry souls broken of all humanity who have become docile, programmable machines.
Weird, indeed.
----
"[H]ow could I possibly convey to them the reality which has to be lived to be understood? What words were there to describe my new experience?"
"One doesn’t have birthdays in Sisyphusa. There’s a different concept of time. The present is so bad and so empty all you can do is think about the past and the future. But I’d lost all objectivity about the past and had no faith in the future. Existence had become a vacuum, a time-warp where every day was the same. It was a nightmare repeated over and over and over again, where no matter how bad the reality was, in my imagination it could always get worse. I no longer recognised my own thoughts. They say that you’re an adult once you turn twenty-one but I honestly couldn’t say whether it was adulthood or Weirdness which changed me so irrevocably because they happened at the same time. I whiled away the rest of the day thinking and crying until I finally fell asleep."
"We have always had idiots in the world, the difference now is the extent to which we are forced to listen to them and how celebrated some of them are for everything that they say or do."
"'It’s rubbish. It’s all rubbish. You are not Weird. At least not any more Weird than I am. There’s no such thing as Weird, or more accurately there’s no such thing as Normal. The Empire has everyone convinced that they are Normal, unless they are Weird or an Outlander. So if you do not fit in you must be hidden away, excluded, locked up, shunned, even laughed at and pelted with stones. It isn’t true, it’s all to make them feel better, to justify their own Normality and to cement their own status at the top of society. Whatever eccentricity or imbalance some Service Users here may have is vastly enhanced by the way we degrade and lampoon them in our society. ‘Service Users’. That’s a joke in itself. This is no service. Service Users are not here to ‘consume Normality.’ This is a prison and whatever you want to call the people imprisoned here will not change the fact that they are prisoners.'"
"The huge giant of a man continued to weep uncontrollably for some time. It was bizarre that he had been so silent for all of the time that I had known him. Why had he opened up to me of all people? I was less than half his age and we had next to nothing in common, not religion, culture, or first language. But the one connection we did have was that we were both there, right there, in that cave, at that precise moment. We were both Service Users, residents of Sisyphusa, held against our will. "
"His mind always seemed to be cast adrift, up in the clouds or at the bottom of the ocean, and always with the same pained expression on his
face."
Weirdness is the appropriate human response to our harsh and futile existence within a dehumanizing system of violence that not only forces people to their breaking point but also conveniently and profitably 'treats' their 'brokenness' as a personal failing. Those who exist within our world and can somehow act Normal are the truly scary and dangerous Weird ones—the inhumane, cut-throat wildcards to watch out for… or maybe just those sorry souls broken of all humanity who have become docile, programmable machines.
Weird, indeed.
----
"[H]ow could I possibly convey to them the reality which has to be lived to be understood? What words were there to describe my new experience?"
"One doesn’t have birthdays in Sisyphusa. There’s a different concept of time. The present is so bad and so empty all you can do is think about the past and the future. But I’d lost all objectivity about the past and had no faith in the future. Existence had become a vacuum, a time-warp where every day was the same. It was a nightmare repeated over and over and over again, where no matter how bad the reality was, in my imagination it could always get worse. I no longer recognised my own thoughts. They say that you’re an adult once you turn twenty-one but I honestly couldn’t say whether it was adulthood or Weirdness which changed me so irrevocably because they happened at the same time. I whiled away the rest of the day thinking and crying until I finally fell asleep."
"We have always had idiots in the world, the difference now is the extent to which we are forced to listen to them and how celebrated some of them are for everything that they say or do."
"'It’s rubbish. It’s all rubbish. You are not Weird. At least not any more Weird than I am. There’s no such thing as Weird, or more accurately there’s no such thing as Normal. The Empire has everyone convinced that they are Normal, unless they are Weird or an Outlander. So if you do not fit in you must be hidden away, excluded, locked up, shunned, even laughed at and pelted with stones. It isn’t true, it’s all to make them feel better, to justify their own Normality and to cement their own status at the top of society. Whatever eccentricity or imbalance some Service Users here may have is vastly enhanced by the way we degrade and lampoon them in our society. ‘Service Users’. That’s a joke in itself. This is no service. Service Users are not here to ‘consume Normality.’ This is a prison and whatever you want to call the people imprisoned here will not change the fact that they are prisoners.'"
"The huge giant of a man continued to weep uncontrollably for some time. It was bizarre that he had been so silent for all of the time that I had known him. Why had he opened up to me of all people? I was less than half his age and we had next to nothing in common, not religion, culture, or first language. But the one connection we did have was that we were both there, right there, in that cave, at that precise moment. We were both Service Users, residents of Sisyphusa, held against our will. "
"His mind always seemed to be cast adrift, up in the clouds or at the bottom of the ocean, and always with the same pained expression on his
face."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews