This is the astonishing memoir of a young woman called only Renee, whose descent into schizophrenia began at the age of five. Written with a diamond-sharp precision that lends it an eerie power, it tells the story of Renee s long sojourn in what she calls The Land of Enlightenment" or The Country of Tibet and of her gradual and painstaking return to wonderful reality.
Renee moves in and out of hospitals, sometimes able to eat only tea and spinach, or apples and spinach, because The System forbade anything else. She regresses to a state resembling infancy, and she experiences intense...