October Child
From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically confined to a psychiatric ward and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, resulting in the loss of memories. This is the story of her struggle against mental illness and isolation

"(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband’s."—The Guardian

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory? This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

1139442705
October Child
From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically confined to a psychiatric ward and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, resulting in the loss of memories. This is the story of her struggle against mental illness and isolation

"(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband’s."—The Guardian

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory? This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

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October Child

October Child

October Child
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October Child

October Child

Overview

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically confined to a psychiatric ward and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, resulting in the loss of memories. This is the story of her struggle against mental illness and isolation

"(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband’s."—The Guardian

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory? This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781642860894
Publisher: World Editions
Publication date: 06/01/2021
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

LINDA BOSTRÖM KNAUSGÅRD is a Swedish author and poet, as well as a producer of documentaries for national radio. Her first novel, The Helios Disaster, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States. Welcome to America, her second novel, was nominated for the prestigious Swedish August Prize and the Svenska Dagbladet Literary Prize in her home country, and was also longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award in the United States. October Child became a bestseller in Sweden and throughout Scandinavia, where it was published to great critical acclaim.

SASKIA VOGEL was born and raised in Los Angeles and now lives in its sister city, Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. Her translations include work by leading female authors, such as Katrine Marcal, Karolina Ramqvist, Lina Wolff, and the modernist eroticist Rut Hillarp. Her debut novel Permission was published in four languages in 2019.

Read an Excerpt

I wish I could tell you all about the factory, but I can’t anymore. And soon I’ll no longer be able to remember my days or nights or why I was born. This is what I know: I was there for several long stretches between 2013 and 2017 and my brain was shot through with so much electricity that they were sure I wouldn’t be able to write this. We’ll start with an intensive series of twelve treatments. This was their word for it. Treatments. A word to neutralize their venture and allay my fears before the procedure. They said it was a merciful treatment, comparable to restarting a computer. Yes, such was the imagery they invoked. Theirs was a language shaped by people who believe that this method can in fact relieve an individual’s suffering, and they were used to the procedure becoming something as easily forgotten as one’s most recent lie. They carried out twenty procedures a day. These conveyor-belt affairs were the crowning glory of a business devoid of insight. In here they had free rein, and could explain away a person dropping out by saying that he or she wasn’t responding to the treatment. Under such circumstances, results were proudly discussed instead. Every gap of contact with the outside world was sealed off. So afraid of being scrutinized were they that everything was blamed on the patient. She was unmanageable. He was already too far gone. She was desperate. The old woman was chronic and should have been living in another era—a time when she could have resided peacefully with the others in a world adapted to all their individual needs. Three hours’ conditional discharge in the park and an always sympathetic nurse’s hands. That was way back when. Nowadays no one wanted chronics on their ward. Results were what mattered, and what got results was the ever-so-popular electroconvulsive therapy, heralded as the answer to every individual’s woes. They sold patients on their treatments—patients who, during the brief windows of opportunity there were for a proper conversation, had no choice but to believe the chief physician. Ten minutes a week, no time for questions. Difficult patients were administered a higher voltage. This was general knowledge.

I harbored a weakness that permeated my being, so I ended up at this place a lot. I’d been subjected to electricity on a number of occasions. I was more than familiar with the treatment.

At five o’clock in the morning a nurse would come into the room to insert a needle. By the way the door handle was grabbed you could tell whether or not it was going to hurt. Zahid was afraid of inserting needles, so he’d always miss and would start sweating right there in the little room. Perhaps his poor aim should have come as no surprise considering the feeble light the lamps in the room gave off. In this half-light, it was a wonder anyone could find a vein. Finally Zahid would slide the needle into the back of the hand, where the veins were most prominent but where it hurt the patient most. If Sister Maria opened the door you knew you wouldn’t feel a thing. The needle slid in painlessly, and so she was the recipient of many grateful smiles. Aalif would jam the needle in. He had perfect aim and for this we were grateful, but his jamming hurt so much that for a moment the pain wiped out whatever reality you happened to be inhabiting. Some poked around without hitting their mark, the veins forever rolling away. Remarkably, veins always rolled for the same nurses. And some would stick it in without warning―at which I’d scream in pain. I needed to prepare myself for the needle’s entry. I needed to hear Here it comes so I could exhale when the needle pushed through the skin and, as if by magic, ward off the pain. Or at least render it manageable. When the needle was in place they taped on an injection port, which they then flushed through with saline to make sure the cannula worked and the anesthesia had free access, both to your body and to your mind, which would yield at once. Total capitulation.

Let’s back up. To how you got here. You were never allowed to enter the factory alone. An orderly was always by your side, and Aalif was often the one who fetched me. I liked Aalif. Nothing wrong with him. He came from a hotter country and had fled war. We would traverse perhaps twenty meters together. First out of the ward, then three steps to the left and into the short tunnel that led to the factory.

We sat in a waiting room all in a row, we who were to be treated and our chaperones. The pace in there was breakneck. They were organized. They managed, as I’ve mentioned, to squeeze in twenty poor souls each morning. We sat in the waiting room and I said nothing for the most part, but if my blood was pumping faster than usual we’d talk about Aalif’s homeland. I’d ask him about the war and if it wasn’t awful being in this country, where no one sat outside at night and where conversations were only ever about whether or not you were someone to be reckoned with. Aalif responded with a gesture that meant what can you do and said: It’s better here. Better for the family.

Often I just sat there, watching the door open at regular intervals; a pressed and polished blond student doctor with white teeth would call out a name and either you’d stay on the waiting room bench, or, if it was your name being called, you and your chaperone would get up and walk into the room.

Once inside, there was no time for hesitation. Up on the gurney. The anesthesiologist: Have you had anything to eat or drink today? Do you have any loose teeth?

Blood pressure was measured while the nurse affixed electrodes to the top of your chest and forehead. Then a student arrived with the oxygen that was to be inhaled in order to saturate the brain. The anesthesiologist would say soon you’ll be sleeping and inject the cold anesthesia into the blood through the pre-prepared cannula. It was like drinking darkness.

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