Mercy Gene

Availability:
Ebook in EPUB format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2023

ISBN-13: 9781773102955

<p><b>Think Maggie Nelson meets Hannah Gadsby.</b></p><p>Told in kaleidoscopic bursts of erratic recollections, daydreams, poetry, and lists, <i>Mercy Gene</i> is the powerful, genre-smashing debut work of auto-fiction by acclaimed writer, playwright, and comedian JD Derbyshire. Inspired by Derbyshire&#8217;s critically acclaimed and award-winning stage play, <i>Certified</i>, and anchored by protagonist Janice/Jan/JD, <i>Mercy Gene</i> is a beautiful, humorous, and sometimes brutal look at queerness, gender confusion, institutionalization, addiction, and abuse. </p><p>Through flashes of memory and imaginings, Derbyshire illustrates the intense and invisible &#8220;side effects&#8221; of psychiatric treatment and the unreliability of memory. In a stream-of-conscious narrative that provokes and consoles, eliciting tears and laughter at equal pace, Derbyshire re-examines a life of unspoken and repressed trauma. Between devastating bouts of depression, hilarious side-quests into the author&#8217;s dryly sardonic inner monologue, helpless moments at the mercy of their own psyche, and tour-de-force appearances by fictional versions of Miriam Toews and the late, great Margot Kidder, Derbyshire leads readers through a non-linear narrative to treatment, forgiveness, and acceptance. </p>