This memoir of a mother who suffered from postpartum psychosis is absolutely unforgettable. Beautifully written, I believe the author does a wonderful job describing her experience with psychosis and how it impacted her entire family. This book is absolutely eye-opening to anyone not familiar with this particular mental health disorder and will bring fresh empathy to women who suffer greatly after the birth of their child.

I tried many times to read this and I could not get into it. I do wonder if it had been an audiobook if I would of found it more engaging

I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
A devastating memoir about postpartum psychosis. Author relates her life, background, belief system and heritage in this memoir. Interesting and informative.

This book could be used as a way to understand how the "personal" is truly always political. As such, it would be a great assignment for undergraduate students in an Intro to Sociology or Social Problems class. It could also be assigned in classes on immigration, gender, families, or a wide variety of other topics. It illustrates how intersectionality is essential for a sociological analysis, which is another reason why I would suggest this book!

I love reading any book about mental illness. Although I do not have children, I was able to relate to the story by Catherine Cho. She is a great writing and I could feel the pain that she was feeling throughout the book. It was a very personal and raw memoir that I really enjoyed. I read and enjoyed Brain on Fire and this book is in the same wheelhouse. It is important to get the message out about Mental Illness and I thank the author for sharing her story with us.

My review for Shelf Awareness is here: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=945#m16526

The review was also cross-posted to Smithsonian BookDragon: http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/inferno-a-memoir-of-motherhood-and-madness-by-catherine-cho-in-shelf-awareness/

Inferno is a powerful, raw memoir about a women's experience with postpartum psychosis. Catherine Cho was raised in a Korean American household. She married and had her first child. She and her husband decided to use part of their family leave to travel the US to visit relatives with their new baby. During this trip, Cho's mental state spiraled downward into a state of postpartum psychosis. She is checked into an institution. Cho is very open about her state of mind throughout her journey and it is quite scary at times. There are moments that she forgets who her husband is and that she even has a child.

In my opinion, this is an important read to shine a light on the mental health issues that women can face after giving birth to a child. Cho's writing took me right into her mind and I deeply felt her sadness that by the time she got out of the hospital her baby son wouldn't remember her. There were a lot of emotions. This would be a great addition to any women's studies or feminist bookshelf.

If you liked Brain on Fire, you will love Inferno. Disturbing, breathtaking, and heartwarming, this books breaks boundaries and taboos with masterful strokes of the pen. This is a memoir to join the ranks of The Glass Castle and Girl, Interrupted. Motherhood, madness, and what it means to be a woman in society in today. Excellent.

‘Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness’ by Catherine Cho is fascinating and poetically written memoir about the author’s experience of early motherhood and postpartum psychosis. As someone who has two young children, I could certainly relate to the bizarre and incredibly demanding experience of early motherhood Cho details in her memoir. Specifically losing bodily autonomy, suffering and recovering from the trauma of birth, and the constant demands and exhaustion that comes from caring for a newborn. Cho also explores how our past experiences and trauma can shape motherhood and even epigenetics. (Epigenetics: the observable phenomena that trauma imprints on our DNA and is passed to future generations) I really liked learning about how her family’s Korean culture and traditions and being raised in America shaped her views. This gives the memoir a beautiful and poetic dimension. When Cho’s baby was about 3 months old, she suffered a psychotic episode and could not recognize her baby or anyone around her and subsequently had terrifying hallucinations. Her first-person accounts of psychosis in the hospital are absolutely frightening. I ended up reading these parts late at night when I was unable to sleep, which was a bad idea! Thankfully, Cho’s husband and family were devoted to her and able to get her immediate care. Cho broaches so many topics about motherhood, expectations, culture, trauma, and medical treatment that are thought-provoking. ‘Inferno’ is a truly affecting, well-written memoir of early motherhood.

Thank you Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

Disclosure: I received a digital ARC via NetGalley and Henry Holt Books, as well as a physical ARC via a friend. This did not influence my thoughts or perception of the book.

Surprisingly taut, and I thought Cho really delved into her past to understand and process her postpartum psychosis. That said, I also feel conflicted about this book in the same way I'm conflicted about Brain on Fire.

As someone who is Korean American but not raised by Korean/Korean American family, it was a glimpse into a world of traditions and an upbringing I never experienced.

Content warnings: postpartum psychosis (...this is most of the book), previous domestic violence (partner), trauma

I was not able to download Inferno by Catherine Cho to my eReader, whether through the Kindle app or the NetGalley app. I submitted a ticket a couple of months ago to NetGalley to inquire. I tried redownloading both of my apps. I believe this was an issue with the file from the publisher. I've checked with NetGalley a second time to see if any progress was made, as I wanted to have enough time to read the book and give a review before it expired from my title list. NetGalley has not been able to get ahold of the publisher to assist or provide a fixed copy. This is about to disappear from my list so I wanted to convey what happened before it disappears. I would have loved to given a review, but I'm unable to read the title. Thanks!

I've had a child. I get it, the way you lose yourself - I found Cho's memoir all the more moving for the fact that I have felt some of what she's felt, although nowhere near the extent she did, as I did not experience any psychosis. But it is a very bizarre thing, to feel like you have lost control of your body and your life, and that part certainly resonated... I found this memoir moving and engaging - although at times it felt like it meandered in ways that I had difficulty with... For all that, it felt very authentic - mental health and the experience of mental continuty is an entirely personal experience and so I am not surprised that it didn't feel coherent to me. I'm sure it didn't feel coherent to Cho. Her memoir captures that discontinuity perfectly and it was definitely worth the read, even if bits felt like work...

i really enjoyed reading this, it was a really touching memoir. and I really felt for the author. It was a well done read and I look forward to more from the author.

Inferno is hands down the best memoir I’ve ever read. It’s incredibly well written, seamlessly detailing the author’s childhood, early adult years, pregnancy journey and psychosis recovery with the perfect amount of detail.

I’m sure it’s because I have three young children, but I felt the author’s loss of identity (when she became a mother) on a deep level. Her raw and honest depiction of her struggles was frightening and beautiful. I will be suggesting (forcing!) all of my mom friends to read this memoir.

Inferno is such a painful story of a young mother, a daughter of Korean immigrants, who is separated from her newborn and committed while experiencing postpartum psychosis. It details the mental breakdown from sleeplessness to hallucinations and paranoia, her time in the hospital as her desperate husband who commits her has no other option, and her past stemming from her childhood. The book kept my interest throughout and was almost understated in regards to some of the shocking stories she writes about. It’s an honest and raw reflection into and out of an initially very bleak and scary mental illness.

Smart, thoughtful, lyric, and terrifying, Cho winds us through the hellscape of postpartum psychosis. Structurally inventive, with lovely sentences.

Catherine Cho’s son was not even three months old when she experienced a psychotic break; when her son’s eyes transformed into devil’s eyes and she had trouble distinguishing between her own life and parallel realities, she was experiencing a rare but serious ailment known as postpartum psychosis. Though the onset typically happens closer to giving birth, the result is just as severe: hallucinations, paranoia, inability to sleep - the list goes on. Basically overnight, a new mother can go from being sleep-deprived, but stable, to being inside the jaws of mental illness.

Cho opens her memoir with her inside a mental hospital, trying to strengthen her grasp on reality while trying to navigate the “office politics” inside the ward. “The fastest way out of here,” a fellow patient tells her, “is to act like you don’t want to leave.” With no sense of how long she’s been inside (days? weeks? months?), she tries to remember who she is and how she came to be there. She uses a journal to record things of which she’s certain are real.

And so we go on a walk with Cho as she rewinds her timeline, first bringing us back to her childhood in a Korean-American family. We see that she’s had complicated relationships with men in the past beginning with her father and ending with an abusive relationship that she fled. We see her meet the man who would become her husband and the happy details surrounding her pregnancy - information that proves foreboding for the reader who knows, eventually, what is coming.

What may not be expected from this book is that it is predominantly this author’s life story leading up to her psychosis. All of the backstory may seem like a distraction from the point if the title and synopsis are to be believed, but I would argue that the extensive backstory is not only great reading, but gives the reader a sense of the person, the mind, to which Cho is attempting to return. When her husband tells her during a visit he pays to the mental hospital that no, she isn’t ready to come home because she’s not “herself” yet, it’s critically important that we know who that self is.

Not only does Cho achieve this, but as we’ve come to know her as a person by the time, toward the end of the book, that she takes us through her stress-induced psychotic break, we can see and fully know how out-of-character this was for her. The way she describes what she was seeing, thinking, and feeling as she began to melt down is all-consuming and terrifying. One minute she’s merely a stressed new mom feeling the weight of her in-laws expectations, the next, she’s seeing things that aren’t real. The reader is along for the ride, seat belts required.

This is a short, but spectacularly done memoir.

Catherine Cho has a loving husband, a new baby son, and a wonderful life in London. Life is good. So good that they decide to take an extended trip around the US to introduce their 2-month-old son to their family and friends. It seems like a fantastic idea. But as the trip progresses, Catherine begins to grow paranoid. She's convinced her in-laws are watching her on cameras. She's on edge all the time and she can't sleep. And then one morning, when she reaches for her son, he looks back at her with devil eyes, and she knows she has to leave.

Inferno tells the story of Cho's harrowing experience with postpartum psychosis, her stay in an involuntary psychiatric ward, and her recovery, but it is so much more than that. The narrative flashes back and forth between the present timeline where she is in the psych ward and back through the events of her life that brought her to this moment.

The writing is excellent. It's descriptive and elegant without being bogged down by lots of meaningless fluff added in to sound more poetic. What really blew me away was how well crafted it was. I read a lot of memoir and have occasional aspirations to write one myself someday, and the thing I find most difficult is how to identify the singular moments and scenes out of a whole life that will illustrate exactly what you mean to say. This book does that brilliantly. Every scene, every piece of dialogue, every snippet of Korean mythology or folktales served a precise purpose.

This book is riveting. Terrifying, electrifying, and compulsively readable. I genuinely could not put it down.

Thank you Netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

WOW.

I'm a postpartum doula and I have to say, this book was very informative and honestly, it also scared the crap out of me. What a horrible, horrible experience postpartum psychosis is, based on Catherine Cho's recollection. It was literally beyond all imagining. I truly felt her intense suffering, confusion and sense of loss and grief.

The bravery to have not only survived what she went through but to them share it with others so they could learn,.. well, I applaud you, Mrs Cho. Thank you for sharing your story with us, so we can learn and hopefully be more aware and helpful to other Moms who are confronted with this.

A very big thank you to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC of "Inferno." All opinions are my own.

“I had never heard of postpartum psychosis before my own diagnosis. Pregnancy had brought a list of worries—episiotomies, prolapse, preeclampsia. I was so preoccupied with the idea of losing my body, it had never occurred to me that I might lose my mind.”
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Inferno is a memoir recounting @catherinekcho experience with her own postpartum psychosis. Her book does so with clear insight and reflection. We start as the narrator wakes up in an inpatient psychiatric unit, and follow along with the the author as she tries to piece together what happened to lead her there. Cho delivers powerful, gut-wrenching snapshots of pain and loss with clear and concise prose, and I found myself rereading the passages to let myself feel the full weight of her words. I would place a trigger warning here for anyone with history or personal experience with psychosis, as some the memories themselves are truly terrifying at times to bear witness to.
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I identified with her descriptions of the early days of motherhood - the endless cycle of “feed, change, sleep”, and setting up a “battle station” on the couch with the breastfeeding pillow, your snacks, Netflix, and your newborn. I loved her writing style and the way she went back and forth in time. This book will stay with me for a long time.
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Thank you to @netgalley and @henryholtbooks for the free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.