This article discusses self-harm, eating disorders and mental illness.
Mental illness is an experience that varies drastically from person to person — but the importance of receiving and accepting help is true for perhaps everyone.
UBC creative writing alum Léa Taranto’s debut novel, A Drop in the Ocean, is based on her personal experiences, showing how the right help at the right time, if accepted, can save a life. In a more subtle way, Taranto also explores the alternative — how harm can also come disguised as help, criticizing aspects of Canadian health care which make mental health services inaccessible or ineffective.
Mira Durand has obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia and other simultaneously existing disorders. She is also a daughter, a friend, an aspiring writer and one of the teens who affectionately call the Residency Adolescent Treatment Centre simply, the Residence. The latest in a string of psychiatric wards, Mira is equipped for her move to the most secure ward of the Residence with a journal full of stories and an only slightly shorter string of swears for the staff.
Her story contains many aspects of every teenager’s life — crushes, school, loss, family. Throughout all of it is her OCD that at times seems to control her life. Compulsions, self-harm and rituals permeate into everything that Mira does, but she finds comfort in words, bonding with staff over a shared love of fantasy.
Mira’s relationships, including those formed at the Residence, are at the forefront of the story. These interactions are what bring out the authenticity and undeniable realness of the almost memoir-like novel. A best friend called Sweets, a nerdy optimist for a therapist and a first love are just some of the significant people that cause Mira to shift toward healing.
Her large family includes a seemingly perfect cousin and her frail grandparents. It is in the passages with her family, and especially with her mother, that a raw genuinity winds between the lines. Mira and her mother both overflow with love toward one another, but their relationship is also riddled with guilt. This relationship is where the tender heartbreak of the book unfolds and where the nuance of mental illness and its far-reaching effects are explored.
As Mira traverses loss and failure, she makes the decision to try to get better for the people who care about her. Though not linear and not easy, Mira sets upon a path of resisting some of her compulsions, taking back small liberties from the clutches of her disorders.
When I began reading A Drop in the Ocean, I considered briefly whether I was supposed to dislike the main character. The book, styled in Mira’s voice, is written in overtly simple prose, at times so full of teenage angst it made me cringe. But suddenly I found myself two-thirds of the way through, finally seeing the humanity and the achingly familiar melodrama of being 16.
The book characterized Mira for what she is — a still-fledgling writer with a story to tell and a struggling teenager trying to navigate a world of pain and love.
I can see how impactful A Drop in the Ocean will be for teenagers, especially those who have had similar experiences to Mira or her “fellow inmates” at the Residence. The book’s accessible writing, poignant passages and heartbreaking rendering of loss and self-hatred make it an important book for young people who are struggling.
The message we are left with is to seek help when we need it and to criticize institutions that are supposed to help us but don’t. The end leaves a bitterly realistic yet hopeful aftertaste. Though mental illness is rarely something that is cured — instead, a constant journey of relapses and recovery — there is help to be had. It can get better.
Pay attention to Taranto’s content warning. Though justified and relevant, the text deals with heavy topics and includes horrific descriptions. And like Taranto urges in her content warning, put your mental health first.
A Drop in the Ocean will be released on May 20.
Share this article
First online
