GIRL, INTERRUPTED FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
‘Spellbinding’ – JENNETTE MCCURDY
‘It’s extraordinary… make your way to this book.’ – SARAH JESSICA PARKER
Alice Carrire tells the story of her unconventional upbringing in Greenwich Village as the daughter of a remote mother, the renowned artist Jennifer Bartlett and a charismatic father,European actor Mathieu Carrire. Her days are a mixture of privilege, neglect, loneliness, anddanger-a child living in an adult’s world, with little-to-no enforcement of boundaries or
supervision.
Alice begins to lose her grasp on reality as a dissociative disorder erases her identity and overzealous doctors medicate her further away from herself. She inhabits various roles: as a patient in expensive psychiatric hospitals, a denizen of the downtown New York music scene, the ingenue in destructive encounters with older men-ricocheting from experience to experience until amedication-induced psychosis brings these personas crashing down.
With gallows humor and brutal honesty, Everything/Nothing/Someone explores what it means for ourbody and mind to belong to us wholly, irrevocably, and on our own terms. In pulsing, energetic prose that is both precise and probing, Alice manages to untangle the stories told to her by her parents, the American psychiatric complex, and her own broken mind to craft a unique and mesmerizing narrative of emergence and, finally, cure.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Imprint: Atlantic Books UK
Publication date: 23/04/2024
Everything/Nothing/Someone
By Alice Carriere
Review by Rosa
I don't think I have ever read a book that is so brutally honest. Everything/Nothing/Someone tells the story of Alice Carriere’s complicated coming-of-age enveloped in the bohemian spheres of the simultaneously sparkly and shady New York City, her journey towards diagnosis and healing, and the flawed systems that failed to protect her.
Alice truly has a way with words; she makes the most horrific situations read so eloquently in a heartbreakingly conflicting kind of way. Her story speaks to the desire to be loved above all else and how when this doesn't exist, or goes wrong, or boundaries are blurred, it can derail your sense of self; spurring a downward spiral that can quickly transform from feeling absolutely everything to nothing at all. However, as Alice shows, when you continue to grow, find language for the traumas you have experienced, and learn to advocate for yourself, eventually this spiral will slow and one day, you'll feel like someone again.
This is a book that certainly won’t be for everyone. Please be aware of your mental and emotional capacity before diving in- contains strong trigger warnings for self-harm, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and substance abuse. For those that appreciated I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.
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