Tanya Frank's candid debut memoir, Zig-Zag Boy, which builds on her essay that appeared in the New York Times in 2017, tells the wrenching story of her son's psychotic break and traces how life has changed for her family in the years since.
Frank is from London but in 2002 relocated to Los Angeles, where she lived with her wife and two sons. One night in the autumn of 2009, her younger son, Zach (whom she sometimes calls "Zigs"), then 19, started whispering his suspicions that he was being monitored by telephone wires and that his friends were actually Russian spies. Frank confirmed that he had not taken drugs, checked that his temperature was normal, and--when his agitation continued--took him to the emergency room. This turned into a 72-hour psych ward hold. It was the start of what has been a decade-plus mental health struggle.
At the time of his breakdown, Zach was studying at UCLA; his hobbies included playing the guitar, surfing and writing a novel. It was not so much his diagnosis--Psychosis NOS (Not Otherwise Specified), with a second opinion of paranoid schizophrenia--that hampered his independent living, but the fear, voices and unpredictable side effects of medications. In the years to come, he resumed his studies off and on and tried a variety of supported housing situations. Whenever he went off his meds, he relapsed into isolation and refused food. Frank came to dread phone calls from his girlfriend or officials.
The present-tense narration involves readers in an ongoing journey. The pace is brisk and the tone never gives in to self-pity. Regular life doesn't stop during a crisis; Frank weaves in the other challenges she was dealing with simultaneously, such as moving to Northern California and attending marriage therapy. She also compares mental health care in the U.S. and the U.K., where she and Zach returned temporarily. In both countries, she concludes, the system is broken.
When Covid-19 hit, travel restrictions exacerbated the difficulty of living between countries. Online support groups helped her family, and nature remained a solace and source of perspective--Frank had trained to be a docent at California's Año Nuevo State Park, where there is an elephant seal colony. She frames the book with depictions of the seal mothers' protectiveness, which contrasts with her feelings of powerlessness to save her son from his mental illness.
This is a bracingly beautiful account of learning to live with uncertainty in turbulent times. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck
Shelf Talker: Tanya Frank's wrenching debut memoir ranges between California and England and draws in metaphors of the natural world as she recounts a decade-long search to help her mentally ill son.