Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness

A diagnosed schizophrenic, Nola Hemley died in 1973 of a medication overdose at the age of 25. In this affecting, highly inventive memoir, Hemley's younger half-brother, a creative writing teacher and the author of Turning Life into Fiction, attempts to understand what led his gifted sister down the path toward mental illness, drawing on her journals and artwork as well as his own memories of her. There are, he discovers, no obvious answers, and his frustration in trying to comprehend the workings of Nola's mind is palpable: ""Whatever I say condemns her, romanticizes her, lies about her, idolizes her, but never, never recreates her in all her complexity."" Perhaps that's why the book keeps veering away from its ostensible subject to tell the story of the author's own childhood and to explore his parents' lives. In the end, Hemley's strikingly, often fascinatingly, postmodern narrative tells us more about the challenges and ramifications of writing a personal memoir than about its subject's life. Readers in search of an in-depth account of a family's struggle with mental illness may come away frustrated by Hemley's sometimes oblique treatment of this theme, but those interested in writing as a process will find his articulate musings amply rewarding. (Sept.)