Holly Rudolph of the Los Angeles Review of Books recently interviewed Claire Phillip’s on her complex relationship with her mother and the process of writing her intimate memoir, A Room with a Darker View: Chronicles of My Mother and Schizophrenia.

Rudolph’s interview allows for nuanced conversation and unspoken understanding, for her mother had a similar mental illness. She writes, “through research into her mother’s schizophrenia, and vignettes depicting the hoops of the American health-care system her family had to jump through in order to treat it, acclaimed author Claire Phillips illustrates in A Room with a Darker View that, as a society, we still have a long way to go in order to better understand and help those with mental illnesses, and to assist their families in getting their loved ones the critical care they need,” emphasizing the shortcomings of mental healthcare and its subsequent impact on patients’ families.

Read the rest of Claire Phillips’s interview here.