The Parakeet

Summary

An account in graphic novel format, based on the author''s own experiences, of a boy coping with his mother'' suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Bastien is eight years old, and his mother is ill. She often has what his father and grandparents call episodes. She screams and fights, scratches and spits, and has to be carted away to specialized clinics for frequent treatments. Bastien doesn''t like it when she goes, because when she comes home, she isn''t the same. She has no feelings, no desires, and not much interest in him, and he imagines her as a comic-book heroine, like Jean Grey, who may become Dark Phoenix and explode in a superhuman fury at any moment.