This is a story of people who exist simultaneously in two different and unusual worlds. It addresses both mental illness, and the realities of health care in the current climate of cutbacks and hospital closures. It is a humorous foray into the mind of a young man in a mental institution who, although given up as unreachable, is in fact very aware of what is going on around him. Jamie perceives things rather differently from everybody else, however, and creates a strange parallel universe that distorts events into whimsical parodies of what we are given to believe is reality.
In the end, though, we are left to wonder just which universe is more real. The novel is called 'Roo' because Jamie seems to think that Rupert, the psychiatrist, is the key to his alternate world...
This is a story of people who exist simultaneously in two different and unusual worlds. It addresses both mental illness, and the realities of health care in the current climate of cutbacks and hospital closures. It is a humorous foray into the mind of a young man in a mental institution who, although given up as unreachable, is in fact very aware of what is going on around him. Jamie perceives things rather differently from everybody else, however, and creates a strange parallel universe that distorts events into whimsical parodies of what we are given to believe is reality.
In the end, though, we are left to wonder just which universe is more real. The novel is called 'Roo' because Jamie seems to think that Rupert, the psychiatrist, is the key to his alternate world...
