Ladybird: My House Burnt Down, My Head Is on Fire!
ISBN: 9781415201336
Penguin Random House South Africa, March 2011
296 pages, Paperback
When quantity surveyor and builder Janita Sakoscheks house burnt down a catastrophic breakdown followed. She lost everything: her paintings, her diaries and photographs, and ultimately, her sanity. Now she sits rooted to a borrowed sofa, chain-smoking, and blackly depressed. When she finally agrees to see a psychologist, she is institutionalized immediately. Episodes from her past and present life make it clear that this crash has been a long time coming. In Ladybird Janita poignantly records her riotous experiences with counselors and characters of all kinds: from psychiatric doctors and patients in Johannesburg to a retired legionnaire in France. We trace her deepening spirituality as she embarks on her most challenging construction job yet: rebuilding the walls of her collapsed life.