MY FRIEND FOX

Heidi Everett

This memoir begins violently. “The cold steel needle goes into my right bum cheek and the yellow oil is pushed in.” Everett is in a psych ward and she’s angry when the antipsychotic drug is injected into her. She learns how she must be if she is to leave, and she does, going back to a world that is often threatening. But her hold on that outside world is fragile, and she finds herself back in the psych ward again and again. In her quest for peace, she finds points of love and contact – her gorgeous red dog, Tigger, music, drawing, and a red fox, who becomes a parable for her path pack. Melbourne-based writer Everett’s words and drawings show readers the world she inhabits with a beauty and simple honesty that moved me – and will many readers – to tears. Her story, she hopes, might help “find a proper, loving home for those awkward parts of our psyche that we find threatening, uninvited and wild”. It’s a book that will haunt you.

CORINNA HENTE VERDICT: Beautiful