Jade's Story

About to leave primary school, Jade finds herself having to adjust to new family circumstances. Her father, increasingly prone to depression, suffers a nervous breakdown and goes violently berserk, the prelude to a period in psychiatric hospital. It is during the visits which she and her mother make to him there that Jade begins to appreciate those factors in his past which have led to his illness and, more generally, to understand some of the many manifestations of the condition known as 'madness'. Central to all of this is the evolving relationship between father and daughter, a theme which Pielichaty explores with subtlety and originality, helped by an atmospheric setting and by a cast of entertainingly offbeat minor characters.