Comedian Adam Cayton-Holland's wry, candid and heartrending memoir, Tragedy Plus Time, chronicles his younger sister's suicide and the shattering effects on him and his family. Raised in a loving home by a lawyer father and investigative journalist mother, Cayton-Holland and his two sisters learned early about injustices in the world. In an attempt to keep their own Colorado world safe, all three children started exhibiting secret obsessive compulsive tendencies with rituals they had to perform to prevent the world from falling apart. As they grew up, Adam funneled his anxieties into stand-up comedy and his older sister, Anna, became a lawyer. His younger sister, Lydia, worked in the family's law office and for Adam.
As Adam's career began to take off as both a stand-up comic and member of the comedy troupe The Grawlix, Lydia began spiraling into mental breakdowns, drug overdoses and psych ward evaluations. Her mental illness became an exhausting routine of rescues and relapses for her family. And then she abruptly killed herself. Her death happened just 10 days before Adam's TV pilot won financing. In his haze of grief, he had to start working on the project, which turned into the sitcom Those Who Can't on TruTV.
Like Tig Notaro (I'm Just a Person) and Patricia Williams (Rabbit), Cayton-Holland is a comedian who has written a harrowing memoir with virtually no laughs. This brave and uncompromising exploration of mental illness and a family working their way out of grief is a helpful and inspiring story. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant