The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet is a memoir with an unusual structure to match its ever-shifting reality. Kim Adrian (Sock) writes the story of her mentally ill mother, how she got this way and what Adrian can or should do about it.
Linda, Adrian's mother, has been diagnosed with a long list of ailments: borderline and narcissistic personality disorders, bipolar, psychosis, paranoia and more. Adrian's father is an alcoholic; his memories can't be trusted because "he'd been drunk the whole time." In constructing this narrative, then, she relies entirely on her own memory. But the trouble with remembering the truth of what happened is that Linda's lies, manipulations and her own troubles with reality created a wildly shifting experience for her oldest daughter. If Linda retold a story, the very truth of it changed for Adrian. Reconstructing the past now is therefore a fraught undertaking.
This attempt to reorganize a life is presented alphabetically, beginning with an anecdote titled "Abecedarian," about an unexplained event in grade school, and ending not with "Zigzag" but rather "&." "Until the mid-nineteenth century, the ampersand was considered the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet," and for Adrian it offers "a verbal umbrella" under which she is both mother and daughter, both happy and sad.
The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet is a feat on many levels. Adrian tells a harrowing story, surprisingly redeemed by her own sweet family, and in many ways also continuing. Her work as glossator is astonishing and inventive. The result is whimsical, even darkly funny at times, brimming with compassion, terribly sad and deeply loving. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia