Relative Stranger: A Life After Death [Paperback]

"Move this to the top of your reading list because it's a gem" Glamour "Relative Stranger is not' just' about mental sickness, but about family relationships, expectations, and the different ways we all find to survive the perilous journey of life." Daily Mail "Outstanding... This is memoir as painstaking investigation...which Mary Loudon achieves triumphantly with a novelists eye for detail. Vivid, true and moving." The Times" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Move this to the top of your reading list because it's a gem, in
which Loudon tackles the tricky subject of how you grieve for a loved one
you barely knew - and how you cope when you discover you knew even less
than you thought... Her harrowing but compelling memoir [is] a book full of
questions - because isn't that what you're left with when you lose someone?
- as well as a vibrantly honest account of raw emotions." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Mary Loudon ... transforms a seemingly sorry life into one warmed
by the kindness of strangers whose acts of altruism Mary sees as a counter
to the teeming cruelties of the world... Heaves with emotional
involvement." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Touching and revealing ... the book's tone pitches from tender to
incisive as Loudon clarifies the facts and misconceptions surrounding
schizophrenia... As Loudon says, it's not our place to judge whether a life
is well lived or not... [so] certain questions remain unanswered but in
their pursuit Loudon finds an intimacy with her sister that was impossible
during her lifetime." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"As Loudon meets a range of people who knew her [sister]... the
book becomes something remarkable. In her previous works, Loudon has used
interviews to paint a picture of particular segments of society... Here she
applies the same skills to Catherine's life and [offers] a vivid impression
not only of Catherine, but also of the speakers themselves, who are brought
to life in a way that makes Relative Stranger read almost like a novel of a
well written kind... With moving simplicity ... these character sketches
are so beautifully crafted... A remarkable and powerful illustration of the
value of every human life, no matter how it is lived."
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'One of the most moving and compelling memoirs of the year.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'Vivid, true and moving.' --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'On the twenty-seventh of January 2001, while I was skiing fast down a mountain in France, my sister, Catherine, was dying slowly in England; in a hospital I didn't know she had been admitted to, from a cancer I didn't know she had, under an identity I had no idea existed'. "Relative Stranger" is the riveting story of Mary Loudon's search for her dead sister, whom she had not seen for the last twelve years of her life. An explicit account of the devastation that schizophrenia can visit upon a person and their family, it will leave no reader unaffected. Asking more questions than it answers, "Relative Stranger" offers a profound and uncompromising challenge to the ways in which we think about one another. Perhaps most compelling is the author's internal journey as she faces head-on her sister's illness and extraordinary alter ego. As Loudon dissects our definitions of sanity and identity, and examines our assumptions about familial responsibility, she challenges everything we believe about what it means to love, to lose, to die, to live and, above all, to belong. "Relative Stranger" is Mary Loudon's most provocative and moving book to date. It is sure to be one of the most talked about and acclaimed books published in the UK next year.

"Remarkable and very affecting, and a comfort too. Mary Loudon sees through the dark of insanity to the light of understanding." Fay Weldon

"Written with great flair, clarity, imaginative instensity and extraordinary confidence, Relative Stranger is convincing, gripping and moving. It deserves to be a triumph." Jonathan Dimbleby

"Mary Loudon reconstructs an extraordinary richness and integrity in what others would see as a broken life. Profound, poignant and beautifully written, it reads as compellingly as a thriller." Marjorie Wallace, Chief Executive of SANE

"A book which is remarkable for being so personal and so wrenchingly honest without self-indulgence." James Naughtie

"Outstanding. Vivid, moving and true ... [writing] worthy of the author of Middlemarch." Bel Mooney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

MARY LOUDON is the author of Secrets & Lives, Middle England Revealed; Revelations, The Clergy Questioned (Penguin), and Unveiled, Nuns Talking. All three were published to enormous critical acclaim. Mary has won four writing prizes. She broadcasts frequently, has contributed to four anthologies, chaired many public discussions and been a Whitbread Prize judge. Mary is 38, married with two young daughters. She lives in Oxfordshire and the Wye Valley. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.