![]() ![]() Agent: Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. ![]() As Caden says, “There is no such thing as a ‘correct’ diagnosis,” and though his story doesn’t necessarily represent a “typical” experience of mental illness, it turns symptoms into lived reality in ways readers won’t easily forget. Challenger Deep is the story of a smart and artistically-talented young man, Caden Bosch, who is afflicted with Schizophrenia. It’s a powerful collaboration, and crucial to the novel’s credibility. Shusterman has mined personal experience of mental illness with his son Brendan, whose line drawings mirror Caden’s fragmentation in swirling lines eerily reminiscent of Van Gogh. ![]() External reality still registers: people around Caden run the gamut of humor, scolding, threats, and avoidance to pressure him into changing behavior he no longer controls. The metaphor’s not exactly subtle, but Shusterman finds unexpected resonance in its details-the tarry seams in the wood, the human ballast. His internal narratives are sometimes dreams, sometimes hallucinations, and sometimes undefinable, dominated by a galleon and its captain, sailing with an enormous, sullen crew to the deepest point of the Marianas Trench, Challenger Deep. Neal Shusterman is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author. With lyricism and potent insight, Shusterman ( Unwind) traces the schizophrenic descent and return of Caden Bosch, an intelligent 15-year-old and a gifted artist. ![]()
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