I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting from "Prozac Highway" (by Persimmon Blackbridge) but this was definitely not it. Janice, or Jam as she is known to her friends, is a mid-40's dyke (her words, not mine) permanently on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She suffers from serious depression and can't seem to perform basic human actions like brushing her teeth or walking to the mailbox. She can, however, find the time to play 6 hours of SwordQuest each day and read through the million emails she gets from her crazy-people support group/listserve. At least 1/3 of the book is messages from other group members, and another third the action taking place in her SwordQuest game. Really?! They made it across the river but then realized they were out of groceries? O no!
As the book goes on her condition worsens and finally at the insistence of her ex-lover and current friend who she makes artsy porn with, she goes to see a psychiatrist who prescribes prozac and lithium. After about a month on the medications (which takes Blackbridge about 2 minutes to go through compared with the 20 pages it normally takes her to write about a day when absolutely nothing happens) Jam begins to have suicidal thoughts. Meanwhile, she gets involved with another crazy person in the group who lives on the other side of the country and is in some sort of mental institution (but conveniently still allowed to use the computer). As their relationship deepens her sanity seems to disappear.
At this point in the book I was kind of looking forward to her just ending it all. Blackbridge drops in plenty of references about scars so I figured I had this ending in the bag. Unfortunately, the best friend appears at the last minute and rushes her to the hospital. She lives, although the ending is more than a little ambiguous.
I was ready to chalk this up as a terrible idea for a novel when I turned the book over and noticed that Persimmon herself looked just like the character, Jam. Guess truth is stranger than fiction...
No comments:
Post a Comment