Exuberance

When Angelica invents a fictional alter ego, Elena, she is forced to admit that she is no longer happy with her perfectly ordinary life. Jimmy, on the other hand, is perfectly happy with his, and is horrified when his wife of eight years abruptly adopts the persona of the exuberant Elena and sets out to conquer the world... and his oldest friend, Tiger. Young Sinead, newly arrived in Sydney, loves Angie's exuberant personality and cannot imagine that she could have ever been any different. And there's Norah, whose precariously balanced world is shaken when Angie's manic behaviour revives a past she has tried hard to forget. Meanwhile Elena, more real than imagined, is biding her time...
Set in Sydney at the exciting time of the 2000 Olympic games, this life-affirming novel explores -with intelligence and sensitivity - the chemistry of 'madness', the anatomy of marriage, the volatility of lust, the power of resilience, and the importance of finding the right measure of exuberance in life.
5 out of 5 - 'A wonderful journey of the power of the human mind'
I loved this book. It is full of real heart and feeling for the trauma of mental illness and how it touches a whole family in their struggle to recalibrate their lives after Angie (the book's heroine) is diagnosed with bi-polar. There is humour and warmth as well as the realistic darkness of the journey for Angie as a wife, daughter and friend. (Amazon.com Customer Review)