Angelhead Read online

  Psychology Today

  “Few other families have had their stories told as crisply and powerfully as Greg Bottoms tells his. Angelhead makes us understand what it is like to live with someone you think you love but don’t know what to do with. It’s one of the saddest, scariest and most powerful memoirs I’ve read.”

  The Detroit Free Press

  “A harrowing yet highly readable description of living with a schizophrenic.”

  Kirkus

  “Readers like me who’ve watched a loved one be sucked under the paralyzing effects of mental illness, who’ve been accosted by the suddenness and the violence of the attack, and who, ultimately, have had to save their own lives at the expense of the loved one, will recognize themselves in the stinging portrait Bottoms paints. He captures the experience of witnessing a family member fragment, of wanting to grab hold of a brother, a mother, a loved one, and pull him or her back, make the person who used to be there reappear.”

  LA Weekly

  “Greg Bottoms’s book is a valuable portrait of the extent to which mental illness damages, toughens, and inspires the lives of people who love the sufferer.”

  SunSpot.net

  “If Angelhead saves anyone, it’s the reader, who is spared reading another book littered with well-worn cliches so common to this genre.”

  New City

  “A competently written book that tells the story it means to tell lucidly and without anger.”

  Salon.com

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to David Chernicky and The Daily Press for permission to reprint the following articles: “Suspect Called Sweet, Troubled . . .” by David Chernicky, Wednesday, April 15, 1992, page B3; “Years After Slaying, Man Surrenders” by Cheryl L. Reed, April 14, 1992, page A1; “Angry at Family, Man Sets Fire to Home . . .” by Matt Murray, February 24, 1993, page B1; “Poquoson Man Sentenced to 30 Years for Setting Fires . . .” by Mary Duan, November 24, 1993, page B3. Reprinted by permission.

  ATRANDOM and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Copyright © 2000 by Greg Bottoms

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bottoms, Greg.

  Angelhead: a memoir / Greg Bottoms.—1st ed. 1. Bottoms, Michael.

  2. Schizophrenics—United States—Biography.

  3. Bottoms, Greg.

  4. Schizophrenics—Family relationships.

  I. Title.

  RC514.B593 B67 2000

  616.8988280092—dc21

  [B]

  000-021353

  Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

  eISBN: 978-0-676-80654-0

  v3.0