ANNA SPARGO-RYAN A Kind of Magic. Reviewed by Virginia Muzik
Anna Spargo-Ryan’s memoir melds a vivid account of lifelong mental illness with thorough research.
Early on in A Kind of Magic, Anna Spargo-Ryan tries to establish where her mental illness story begins, looking – not surprisingly – to her family. Did she inherit depression from a paternal grandfather or a ‘long-ago uncle’? OCD from her maternal grandmother? Anxiety and catastrophising from her parents?
As she recalls possible points of the genesis of her mental illness, Spargo-Ryan admits memory is seldom reliable, while noting childhood memory in particular is crucial to how we form our identities:
Throughout our lives, but especially as children, we take in and store information that propels us through the rest of our existence. None of it is definitive. Memories that seem clear to us as adults are changed by many factors: the passing of years, trauma, injury, decay. Even the act of remembering distorts it; we recall and store a memory differently every time. Among our tools for developing our sense of self are fabrications, hearsay, things that happened in a dream and stuff that was actually on TV.
Spargo-Ryan examines the nature of memory and identity – and our responses to both – throughout the book. She splices together memories from her childhood, teenage years and early adulthood with more recent recollections – not always in chronological order, perhaps to demonstrate the temporal fluidity of memory, and how trauma memory especially can trap our present selves in a past moment:
Trauma draws fault lines between short- and long-term memory to the extent that it can be impossible to know when we are in time. Long-ago atrocities persist as newly created memories. As threats.
The main chapters are narrated in the past tense, but some are preceded by brief, present-tense scenes titled with months of the year. In these scenes, Spargo-Ryan recounts her experience of myriad mental illnesses and her specific interactions with mental health support: her therapist, a crisis assessment and treatment team, and her family.
These separate timelines (which eventually converge) give the narrative a somewhat disjointed feel that mimics the non-linear nature of memory. It also serves to chart Spargo-Ryan’s path to a degree of healing and self-acceptance.
With main chapter titles lifted from what she calls ‘the clinical or technical definition of an aspect of life with mental illness’, Spargo-Ryan aims to show how poorly these terms reflect a person’s deeply individual experience of mental illness.
The titles also reinforce another important theme in the work: how the inadequacies of the language used to diagnose, define and discuss mental illness can lead to gaps in communication between someone with mental illness and health professionals, as Spargo-Ryan has experienced:
Language fell devastatingly short in getting me the appropriate help … When I said I had anxiety, what I actually meant was that my thoughts and body weren’t synchronised and it made me frightened – I was panicked, but also extremely confused … I couldn’t put these experiences into words they could match up with their clinical tools.
She also acknowledges how language and literacy levels can further impede access to appropriate treatment:
As with many invisible illnesses, professionals rely on a patient to accurately self-assess. This assumes both a level of literacy and the capacity to match an abstract feeling to a concrete diagnostic criteria.
This is a thoroughly researched work (emerging from a PhD project), but it’s more accessible than academic. Spargo-Ryan deftly weaves in a mix of citations to back up or contrast her personal experience, which makes for an engaging and enlightening read.
Spargo-Ryan’s personal recollections are also in clear, accessible language. At times urgent, frightening and funny, she manages to move the reader without using flowery or melodramatic prose. She balances the dark and harrowing moments with humour and singularly original turns of phrase. In a section recalling the day she met her partner, Gaz, she writes:
I smelled horrible. I smelled like someone you would find in your cupboard and fend off with a rake. I know because I have been that person and I know how I smelled then.
It’s Spargo-Ryan’s descriptions of her panic attacks, and psychotic and dissociative episodes, that are especially compelling. In a vivid example, she recounts a psychotic episode when she was four months pregnant with her first child:
I opened my eyes and I was not there. Nobody was inside of me. Not me or the baby. The shell of a body frightened me. Help, I said. Help. HELP. Then I was up, scrambling out of the makeshift bed. My skeleton raced to catch up with me, running, sprinting.
In a later, particularly poignant section, Spargo-Ryan reflects on how terrifying it was as a six year old to witness her mother having a panic attack; how she’d often blame herself for it. To lessen the impact of her mental illness on her two children, Spargo-Ryan is able to explain to them what’s happening as it’s happening:
Now when I’m having a panic attack, I can pull it together enough to say to them, ‘This isn’t your fault. You’re safe. I’m not in danger, my brain just thinks I am.’
Through writing her story, Spargo-Ryan says she has ‘rewritten my identity. I have an improved understanding of what happened and why. I have come to a sense of forgiveness …’ Through sharing it, she offers compassion and companionship – to herself and the reader. As she says in a video on her website: ‘I hope that it can become like a friend on your bookshelf.’
A Kind of Magic is ultimately an uplifting read that’s brimming with hope. It’s especially affirming for anyone living with mental illness. For those wishing to better understand what that’s like (perhaps even mental health clinicians, therapists and support workers), this book may help bridge gaps in communicating such an individual experience, hopefully leading to better health care.
Anna Spargo-Ryan A Kind of Magic Ultimo Press 2022 PB 352 pp $36.99
Virginia Muzik lives and writes on Gadigal land. Her memoir works are featured in the 2022 Hunter Writers Centre Grieve anthology and online journals. She is slowly working on a full-length memoir. Find her on Twitter @writeNOISEComms and virginiamuzik.com
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