Christina Patterson overcomes family misfortunes

The journalist and broadcaster Christina Patterson’s memoir begins promisingly. She has a talent for vivid visual description, not least: ‘We are a pink and navy family. Two pink girls, a navy boy and a navy wife.’ Her early family holidays in Sweden, where her mother is from, are full of lingon-berries, hammocks and mini-golf. She recounts the story of her parents’ courtship as students and says of their relationship: ‘Love at first sight. Love for nearly 50 years. Love till death do us part’ — ominously pointing out how easy they have made love and marriage look. Most arresting, however, in this early part of the book, is her depiction of her elder sister Caroline’s nervous breakdown as a teenager. From her mother’s diary she quotes that her sister ‘says everything is her fault and mixes up bombs and security agents and hears children crying in the streets’.

Patterson writes about her sister’s schizophrenia with candour and sensitivity. Caroline’s lucidity about her own illness pierces the heart, particularly when a psychiatrist writes to their parents:

I can truthfully say that, except for the doctor patient I mentioned, I have not met anyone before who has been able to talk about their illness so sensibly and objectively.

I was also moved by her delineation of the practical problems of serious mental illness. Despite her best efforts, Caroline is unable to hold down a job, largely because the Largactil she is prescribed makes her sleepy. When she loses her position as a part-time cleaner in the kitchens at the University of Surrey, where she was paid £2.57 an hour in the late 1980s, I felt like shaking my fist at the sky.

Caroline is full of surprises, however, and travels to Russia, fuelled by her interest in the Romanovs; has legions of friends and in terms of romance, Patterson says of her brother and herself: ‘Our elder sister put us to shame.