Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness

by Catherine Cho

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Author: Catherine Cho

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 1250623715
ISBN 13: 978-1250623713

Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis.

When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity.

In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward.

The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience – of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.

Review

“Completely devastating. Completely heartbreaking. Written in luminous, spiralling prose.”
–Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under

“A fierce, brave, glittering book that charts with unflinching honesty the shift from one reality to another and the family ghosts that - without always knowing it - we all carry. I was drawn into Catherine’s story but I was also drawn into her mother’s, her grandmother’s, and those too with whom she shared that time in a psychiatric unit. But most of all it offers hope. Even from that place of darkness and confusion.”
–Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“Inferno does just as the title suggests, it throws you into the flames of the author's psychosis so that you are in there with her, fighting for your next breath. I've rarely read such a powerful account of madness. Gripping, chilling and ultimately hopeful, this is one not to miss.”
–Lisa Jewell, author of The Family Upstairs and Then She Was Gone

“I was hooked from the very start, by the “dear reader” letter setting the scene for all that followed. It is at heart a love story, but one in which unimaginable, wonderfully depicted, mental torture intrudes. In sharing this pain, and exploring its cultural and other causes, Catherine Cho does a great service to the cause of breaking down stigma surrounding mental ill health. Above all though she has written a beautiful book.”
–Alastair Campbell

“Utterly compelling and beautifully written, Inferno is one of the bravest and most beautiful books I have ever read. I devoured it in one sitting and loved every page.”
–Alice Feeney, author of Sometimes I Lie

“This book is utterly brilliant: poetic, truthful, frightening, clever. I held my breath at both the power of the prose and the writer’s unflinching honesty. Catherine Cho is most certainly a writer to watch.”
–Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

“A powerful and poignant book. The difficult and haunting brutality of both psychosis and relationships was so beautifully and honestly portrayed.”
–Bev Thomas, author of A Good Enough Mother

About the Author

Catherine Cho works in publishing. Originally from the United States, she's lived in New York and Hong Kong, and she currently lives in London with her family.

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Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness