Childhood Made Up: Living With my Mother's Madness - Brent Meersman

Childhood Made Up: Living With my Mother's Madness - Brent Meersman

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I remembered how, when I was a small child supposed to be asleep, my mother would slip into bed behind me and hold me. She would be trembling. She couldn’t hide it no matter how young I was. ‘Go to sleep, go to sleep,’ she’d say, as if that would save us.

Brent Meersman’s poignant memoir of a humble and eccentric upbringing in Cape Town, South Africa, in the 1970s and ’80s reads as a stirring eulogy to his mother, and a vivid snapshot of the times. His adoring mother, a horse-loving artist, received only rudimentary treatment for her schizophrenia; while his father battled a vicious whirlpool of alcohol-fuelled depression.

A Childhood Made Up is beautifully observed and filled with wry humour. Delicate yet brutal, this story pays testament to the power of love and the quiet heroism of resilience.