Lithium for Medea

From start to finish Kate Braverman forces the reader into a fun house, a meat grinder, turning and forcing you to experience a well oiled intensity. At times the writing is caustic, biting and poisonous. Poison to the emotions, a drug that invokes passion. The atmosphere is vivid and surreal for the reader though, at times, not for the narrator. A superb book. Each line is finely tuned and crafted like music, rich in images and color like photography and still is able to shake the humanity through the novel. Highly recommended especially for other writers.

Few people know that 2006 is the 25th anniversary of the first pubication of "Lithium for Medea," Kate Braverman's glittering and riveting first novel. Setting her book in the many odd facets of the Los Angeles in which she grew up, a land of the disaffected and disenfranchised, she opens the city in a way that few writers have even attempted to do. She illustrates and paints it in its own dark spectrum of blues, from the undiminished powderpuff blue of its cloudless morning sky to the bruised indigo of its desperate nights. She fills it with alienated people doing irreversible damage to themselves and others. At the heart of her novel is a life-and-death struggle between a mother and daughter who are in many ways more similar than they even wish to be. The daughter expresses her bottomless depression and sense of alienation by sinking into a world of abusive relationships and destructive substances. This is not a book that speaks to everyone; only those who are capable of examining the darkest aspects of the world in which they live can open to and appreciate Braverman's perceptions, or even her prose, which has the faultless savagery and cadence of a well-wrought poem. To celebrate its silver anniversary, "Lithium" has been republished with a reprint of the wonderful preface by writer and admirer Rick Moody. It's an underground monument to American life worth reading and owning, and Braverman is one of our most unique, most authentic authors.

I've read this book and have taken its significance personally.However, the lyricism stands above that of male authors whooriginally capitalized on the trend to glorify, explain andidentify with abuse of cocaine.And it isn't that simple. I commend Kate Braverman for not taking a simplified polemic view of "rehabilitation." Writing something versed in poetry and greek tradition draws out the tragedy much more poignantly than anything else I've ever read.The language employed in this novel elevates it to art. And I just can't say that about contemporaneous works on the same subject written by male authors.So Reprint, Reprint, Reprint, and realize that other women of my generation might deign to listen to a genuine, artistic, beautiful rendition of something with which they may identify.Sincerely,Lydia Hazen

This book is tremendous, and I agree with the other review: Get This Book Back Into Print! Braverman began as a poet, and you can see it in her own unique style. After reading her incredible prose, you'll understand why she has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. The story is about a woman heavily addicted to cocaine, whose dad is heavily into gambling ("the horses") and is also afflicted with cancer. It's about the woman's struggle to get away from both the white powder as well as from the bad men who've helped her get addicted. You will not read better-crafted prose than this novel...

This is a commanding novel that is unafraid to explore areas left untouched by other novelists. Braverman is equally unafraid of using language that is rich and at the same time exact. Scenes in this novel linger long after one has finished reading it. That it is out of print is a harsh indictment on the publishing industry, with its seemingly apathetic attitude toward excellent writing like Braverman's. When will publishers face their duty to preserving literature?