Raincoast Books
Available: 02/10/04
5 1/4 x 8 · 288 pages
978-1-55192-687-2
CDN $34.95 · cl

Canadian Title

Buy the Book
Amazon.ca
Chapters.Indigo.ca
Independent Retailers

print

Nervous System

or Losing my Mind in Literature

Jan Lars Jensen

Jan Lars Jensen noticed that when his writing was going well, it felt as if something came unhinged in his mind. The rush of ideas and language felt like losing, wilfully, a little mental stability. But true madness didn’t come until he published his first book.

His novel, Shiva 3000, was categorized as science fiction, but nothing in the book could match Jensen’s own apocalyptic delusions and visions. And just as literature prompted his slide into psychosis, so did it play a significant role in his subsequent recovery—his world was defined by words and writing.

Jensen’s novel didn’t set the world on fire, literally or metaphorically—at different times he expected it to do both—but it did provide an extraordinary experience. Gripping and harrowing, darkly comic and deeply moving, Nervous System is the memoir of a novelist who almost let his vivid imagination get the best of him.

“As a brave, unflinching look at mental illness, Nervous System is revelatory; as a candid, conflicted view of the creative process, it is a revelation.” —Robert J. Wiersema, The Vancouver Sun

“[A] weird and brilliant memoir ... Jensen’s writing is smooth and elegant, his narrative suspenseful, his sensibility witty ... he delivers a smart and sympathetic narrator—himself—whose personal adventure, as terrifying as any in the thriller rack at the drug store, captures the catastrophes of the present, the ones lurking much closer to home.” —Nancy Wigston, Toronto Star

“Nervous System is not just a compelling memoir, it’s an important one. Mental illness manages to be both glamorized and stigmatized in our culture. What is often missed is what Jensen shows us convincingly: the moment-to-moment unhappiness of losing your mind ... Both harrowingly authentic and poignantly understated. This is, if we’re lucky, as close as most of us will get to going really crazy.” —Joel Yanofsky, The National Post

“Candid, merciless, funny, horrific, insightful—often all at once.” —Locus Magazine

Jan Lars Jensen’s first novel, Shiva 3000, was published by Harcourt in North America and Macmillan in the U.K. and was listed in the Guardian as one of the top 10 fantasy novels of all time. He lives in Calgary.

Jan Lars Jensen’s website