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A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness
by Catherine Cho
Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis.
When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip's end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity.
In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward.
The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience – of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.
"[A]n eerie, unsettling debut memoir...This piercing narrative about motherhood and a fraying human mind will slowly and creepily pull the reader in and leave a chill." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Haunting and emotionally intense, this powerful memoir explores the hidden connections that tie families across generations, offering poignant meditations on the meaning of motherhood and identity. A compelling look at a mysterious mental illness." - Kirkus Reviews
"Cho's harrowing memoir recounts her experience of postpartum psychosis after the birth of her son, Cato...Throughout, Cho meditates on the ways in which Korean culture has informed her ideas of motherhood and mental health, and her expectations around both. It's a vigorous and affecting read." - Buzzfeed "29 Summer Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down"
"Inferno is a brilliantly frightening memoir about Cho's two weeks on the psychiatric ward, elegantly interwoven with tales from her past...[Cho writes] herself into motherhood and into a form of sanity that does not leave behind the insights enabled by psychosis." - The Guardian (UK)
"Fascinating...beautifully written...This is a highly accomplished memoir. Cho deftly weaves the strands of her experience to create something striking and original." - The Times (UK)
"Completely devastating. Completely heartbreaking. Written in luminous, spiralling prose." - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
"A fierce, brave, glittering book that charts with unflinching honesty the shift from one reality to another and the family ghosts that - without always knowing it - we all carry. I was drawn into Catherine's story but I was also drawn into her mother's, her grandmother's, and those too with whom she shared that time in a psychiatric unit. But most of all it offers hope. Even from that place of darkness and confusion." - Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
"Inferno does just as the title suggests, it throws you into the flames of the author's psychosis so that you are in there with her, fighting for your next breath. I've rarely read such a powerful account of madness. Gripping, chilling and ultimately hopeful, this is one not to miss." - Lisa Jewell, author of The Family Upstairs and Then She Was Gone
"I was hooked from the very start, by the 'dear reader' letter setting the scene for all that followed. It is at heart a love story, but one in which unimaginable, wonderfully depicted, mental torture intrudes. In sharing this pain, and exploring its cultural and other causes, Catherine Cho does a great service to the cause of breaking down stigma surrounding mental ill health. Above all though she has written a beautiful book." - Alastair Campbell
This information about Inferno was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Catherine Cho is an agent at Curtis Brown in the UK. Originally from the US, she's lived in New York and Hong Kong, and she currently lives in London with her family. Inferno is her first book.
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