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Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (New
York: Anchor Books/ Doubleday, 1996).
The Margaret
Atwood Information Site.
This novel is based on the true story of a woman convicted of
murder in 19th century Canada. The story line of the novel follows the process
by which a psychologist seeks to uncover her story and discovers finally that
the crime was committed by another personality. The novel is completely
faithful to how a doctor in the mid-19th century would have understood multiple
(or at the time what was considered to be dual) personalities; it is not shaped
at all by a 20th century understanding of DID. An interesting read, but don't
expect light entertainment.
Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes,
Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).
A novel of a Haitian girl growing to womanhood in Haiti and New
York in the shadow of her history. Her mother became pregnant with her as the
result of a rape at age 16. And she and her mother and her mother before her
struggled with the trauma of the experience of each having their mother
regularly test their virginity. This book faces the pain head on, and preserves
some hope. Multiplicity is referred to as a cultural tradition, that women
"double" to survive the trauma they grow up with.
Philip Graham, How to Read an Unwritten
Language (New York: Scribner, 1995).
This book is the story of a boy who grows up with a mother who
develops multiple personalities and then kills herself. Despite that
description it is in many ways a hopeful book, as the boy grows into a man who
can read the symbolic meanings of everyday things. Part of the story concerns
his collection of objects associated with painful episodes in other people's
lives, and how he gives those objects and their stories to people who need
them. The book is not particularly sophisticated about multiple personalities,
but the son's coming to understanding of the world was meaningful to me.
Philip Graham, Interior Design:
Stories (New York: Scribner, 1996).
None of these short stories deal directly with multiple
personalities, but there are several stories that deal very strongly with
inside worlds and with the relationship between the inside world and the
outside world. If you have an inside house that is elaborately decorated you
have to read the title story.
Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (Translator) Fernando Pessoa Co.: Selected Poems (New York:
Grove/Atlantic, 1999).
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is Pourtugal's greatest poet. He had a
number of what he called heteronyms--personalities who wrote very different
poems and who commented on each other's work. As I read the poems this seems to
me to be more than a literary device; it seems to me that he had multiple
personalities and made constructive use of it. One of his heteronyms wrote an
autobiography called The Book of Disquietude.
Barbara Wilson, If You Had a Family
(Seattle: Seal Press, 1996).
This novel tells much of the same story as Barbara Wilson's memoir,
Blue Windows. Sexual abuse by the main
character's uncle is a significant part of the story, though not always the
center. The book deals with the process of recovery in the context of lesbian
relationships. Some of the incidents seemed a bit cliché to me, but the overall
effect is moving.
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