Sunnybrook

Janet Money, formerly the sports editor of the Woodstock Daily
Sentinel-Review, is a freelance writer and editor in London, Ontario.

Persimmon Blackbridge’s account of her experiences as a worker in an
“institution for the mentally handicapped” has appeared in the form
of an art installation and a video. The book version is an exquisite
package of narratives and color illustrations (both drawings and
photographs of cutouts of human figures in boxes that were part of the
art exhibit) relating the adventures of Diane (known as Persimmon to her
friends), who fakes her way into a counseling job at Sunnybrook.

Everyone wears street clothes at Sunnybrook, but that’s not the only
reason it’s hard to distinguish between patients and staff. It’s all
craziness to Diane, who uses a sort of hypertext—marginal comments
with arrows linking them to the main narrative—to provide comment on
the story. (Main narrative: “I pointed to a picture of a car and asked
what it was. Mary told me it was a car.” Hypertext comment: “Making
conversation with Mary was slow going.”) What is sanity? What is
reality? Who can you trust? The author of Her Tongue on My Theory and
Drawing the Line explores these questions in a delightfully provocative
way.