Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness

Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness

Catherine Cho

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis. When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She interweaves these parts of her past with an immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward.


From the Forum

No posts yet

Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update

Recent Reviews

Your rating:

  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    This was a beautifully written memoir shedding light on an often stigmatized and ignored topic. I thought the author did a fantastic job conveying a sense of vertigo that mirror her own feelings. I highly recommend this read! It read somewhat similarly to "Brain On Fire" but with the added twist of motherhood and cultural expectations.

    * it was a warning against the triumph of love, because something so beautiful, so raw can only end. to bare one’s heart is to know suffering, vulnerability. it is a destructive force. that’s what makes it beautiful, to know mortality and failure, but to step off the edge anyway. (65%)
    * i wondered if there was a way to build love, and if there was, did that mean it was manufactured, less real. (95%)

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • View all reviews
    Community recs if you liked this book...
    logo

    © 2024 Pagebound

    Buy Lucy & Jennifer a coffee ☕️