Halfway House by Katharine Noel

In this novel about a teen-aged girl suffering from bipolar disorder, star high school swimmer Angie Voorster nosedives into mental illness one day at a swim meet - or at least that's how it seems at the time - and the family is never the same. In truth, there had been signs of mania prior to the day that Angie had gracefully slid to the bottom of the pool during her off-event, and, when dragged kicking and scratching from the water, confided that her secret to underwater swimming was that she "didn't need to breathe." But the symptoms had been ascribed to creativity, genius, actually. After the breakdown, however, there was no denying it, and, as in so many cases, treatment was a crapshoot. Some of it worked, some of the time, but none of it worked all of the time. So Angie was sent to live at a boarding ranch and her parents and brother adjusted to the new dynamic of family. This is the novel, Halfway House, by Katharine Noel.

I, too, suffer from bi-polar disorder, and read a lot, but I haven't read a lot of fiction featuring characters who suffer from bi-polar disorder. Maybe there isn't a lot out there. Maybe I've missed it. But when I came across this novel, I was naturally intrigued to see how this character and family would be portrayed. Some of it I could relate to, some of it I couldn't, as my symptoms were generally not that extreme, but I have known people in similar states, so that was interesting. As a novel, I was a little disappointed. I felt the story lacked focus. It began as if it would closely follow the experiences of Angie, veered off into the individual and private lives of her family members, but never really felt cohesive in its weaving together of these various elements. Mom over here, dad over here, brother over here, and Angie popping in and out in various stages of stability, at various points in time. It seemed to go a long way to get nowhere. The writing was eloquent and the characters were true, but I wanted more density or something more raw from these circumstances, circumstances so opposite from what these people expected to find themselves in just months-or even hours-before the story began. Noel teaches at Stanford, and no doubt understands the craft. This was her debut novel, and I imagine, if she continues to publish, there will be yet greater things to come.