Women are expected - even, in my experience, encouraged - to feel a bit weepy after the birth of a baby. But the self-destructive black rage into which Fiona Shaw (no, not the actress, though the latter makes a brief appearance as "my famous thespian namesake") fell ten days after she brought her second daughter home from hospital is as far removed from the "Baby Blues" as is night from day. We're talking electric shock therapy here, and crouching in corners, and trying to tear your own eyes out with your nails, and worse; she came "out of it" eventually, and this book is both the result of that healing process and an integral part of it. It's an angry and, at times, despairing book - she lavishes particular scorn on psychiatrists for what she feels is their condescending manner and maddeningly unshakeable dogmatism - and it doesn't go for easy answers. At the centre of Shaw's experience, as related here, is a deep well of nothingness, depression - as she herself is only too well aware - being a notoriously incommunicable state. But it's a strikingly honest book, and a testament to the power of one woman's will.
