Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 2001

SONES, Sonya. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. l49pp. $14.95 (h).

It really happens just like that, in the blink of an eye. An older sister has a mental breakdown and has to be hospitalized. A younger sister is left behind to cope with a family torn apart by grief, and friends who turn their backs on her. But worst of all is the loss of her sister, her confidante, her best friend. In the eloquent tradition of The Bell Jar and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden comes this haunting book, inspired by the true story of the author's life. It is an intense and brutally honest story, told in a succession of powerful poems that take us into the cyclone of the narrator's emotions: grief, anger, guilt, resentment, horror, and, ultimately, acceptance.