Structure

Structure of Bitter Medicine
The memoirs structure is created in an easy to read structure. It is divided into an Introduction, eight parts and an epilogue. The eight parts are broken down as follows: 1. Information about Ben his illness and his death(the first brother diagnosed with schizophrenia and later kills himself) and a background of the Martini family history. 2. Details of Olivier's first couple of hallucinations and how the family deals with it. 3. Descriptions of Liv's experience in the hospital and the relapse he has. 4. Liv and Clem establishing communication through writing letters, made them reconnect and Clem was able to better understand Liv's illness. 5. The sudden death of Clem and Liv's father and another relapse of Liv's illness. Clem and Liv also explain circles of mental health hell as they call it. 6. Explanation of how the government has failed the mental health sector. 7. Liv gets diabetes and rushed to the hospital. 8. How the government should be helping those with mental illness. The Epilogue touches on what the Martini family is up to, and some updated background informationa and statistics on health care regarding mental illness. I find the way that the memoir was broken down made it easy to seperate all of the important events which occured in the lives of the Martini family and Olivier in specific. Also, on majority of the pages Olivier illustrates the narrative that Clem is explaining. The illustrations look like they were quickly sketched by a pen and/or marker. The illustrations help the reader to understand the emotions in Liv at certain moments, and what he thought about his situation. http://prairiemary.blogspot.ca/2010/02/bitter-medicine-graphic-memoir-of.html

A blog of a girl explaning her take on the graphic memoir.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Bitter+Medicine+Graphic+Memoir+Mental+Illness+Clem+Olivier+Martini/2636915/story.html

The Montreal Gazette also posts one of Olivier's drawings onto their webpage.

Anna Garcia Ambler