No One Gets to Fall Apart: A Memoir

by Sarah LaBrie

A Lit Hub's "Most Anticipated" * An Oprah Daily "Best Book of Fall" * An Esquire "Best Memoir of the Year" * A San Francisco Chronicle "New Book for a Season of Change" * A Zibby Owens "Most Anticipated"

In this poignant memoir, as candid and indelible as The Glass Castle and Memorial Drive, a writer takes on the conflict between the love that binds us to home and the desire to escape it for good .

On a highway in Houston, Texas, Sarah LaBrie’s mother was found screaming at passing cars, terrified she would be murdered by invisible assailants. The diagnosis of schizophrenia that followed compelled Sarah to rethink her childhood, marked at turns by violence and all-consuming closeness.

Digging into the events that led to her mother’s break, Sarah traces her family history of mental illness, from the dysphoria that plagued her great-grandmother, a granddaughter of slaves, to her own experience with depression as a scholarship student at Brown. At the same time, she navigates a decades-long fixation on a novel she can’t finish but can't abandon, her complicated feelings about her white partner, and a fraught friendship colored by betrayal.

Spanning the globe from Houston’s Third Ward to Paris to Tallinn and New York to Los Angeles, No One Gets to Fall Apart is an unflinching chronicle of one woman's attempt to forge a new future through a better understanding of the past.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Biography Memoir, Psychology, Audiobook, Biography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 2024

Reviews

[Nikki Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The very FIRST PAGE hits me square in the eyes!!! Wham 🥊 Wait… this isn’t my story is it? No, it’s not. However, Sarah LaBrie begins with a phone call she receives in 2017. Once again her grandmother is telling her that her mother was found on the side of the freeway parked and deathly afraid federal agents were out to kill her. This starting the hamster wheel of a tortured schizophrenic. Well, I’m here to tell you that my own mother and grandmother both suffered from horrific delusions as well. My own mother was also picked up off the highway afraid of someone or something trying to kill her. I was immediately catapulted back to my early twenties. Flashbacks to the twilight zone.

Sarah’s story is about a woman from Houston who dreams of being a writer. She starts with fiction and realizes much later that it is her mother’s story she wishes to write.

I could completely relate to her humiliation whenever her mother was around and not knowing if she was going to have an episode or breakdown in front of people. Many trips to institutions where medications are administered and she gets back on track. But I know this is something schizophrenics hate to do, take the dang medicine!

I really felt some sort of connection to this story on the mental illness in families. No one realizes the toll it takes on you and your family until you’re in it. Sarah, I thank you for sharing yours and your mother‘s story with the world. I loved how Lance Banks really had a connection to your mother and that part was real for her.

If you are struggling with your mental health, please reach out to someone. I highly suggest giving this a read if you enjoy strong memoirs!

- Sarah has now produced and written for HBO, MAX, Starz and Hulu/Disney.

Thank you so much @harperbooks @harpercollins and @itsmesarahlabrie for my #gifted ARC copy. It was a pleasure to read and review

[Laura Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarah Labrie has always had to keep it together. Her mother is schizophrenic and constantly worries about being in danger. Sarah plays along with her mom’s delusions, but there’s no room for Sarah to be the child in the relationship. This is such a strong memoir about the fear of inheriting mental illness and trying to outrun our genetics and family history, all while trying to navigate the world as a young Black woman. This memoir is so rich. It tackles complicated friendships and relationships, career dissatisfaction, deeply rooted insecurities, and the question of whether to start a family with severe mental illnesses in one’s DNA. I felt the author’s fears of falling apart like her mother. She feels like she’s always one setback away from losing it all. The stakes are higher for her as a Black woman trying to make it in a competitive industry. Vulnerability flies off these pages. This book also offers a lot of compassion for people with schizophrenia and makes the reader think about what it would be like to live with such a severe mental health issue. I think this is a beautiful story of compassion and understanding, and everyone should approach schizophrenics with the same kind of tenderness and sympathy as Sarah Labrie.

[tei hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a beautiful, melodic, personal memoir. labrie’s voice shines throughout, and the interweaving of both hers and her mother’s stories is crafted so beautifully. already recommended to a friend. this was stunning.

(i was given an arc in exchange for an honest review)

[Flo · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars!

I really, really wanted to like this more than I did, and I was so disappointed that I didn't. Based on the summary, I had thought that this would be moreso about the author's relationship (both past and present) with her mother through the diagnosis of her schizophrenia and everything, but instead, we got a little bit of everything going on in her life. Too much breadth, not enough depth. I mean, I know that in some ways, it was all connected, because the trauma of her childhood definitely contributed to her depression and the way that she views the world now, but I never really felt like it was linked too well together in the prose. I wanted more about her developing relationship with her mother instead of bits and pieces throughout the book scattered in between her difficulty with writing, her fraught relationship with a close friend, and her conflict about her partner.

I also just never felt like the author portrayed herself in the most sympathetic way, which made it hard for me as the reader to sympathize. Of course, the way that she reacts to conflict and difficult emotions is likely again influenced by the way that she was raised and how she grew up, but that doesn't make me like or root for her any more despite knowing that. Her conflict resolution skills were pretty much zero for most of the novel, and her partner was really much more patient than I would have been in that situation. I spent a lot of time frustrated at her and sort of feeling bad that I was frustrated because again, I'm sure that the way she was raised didn't help the situation.

However, I did like the discussion of race/culture and the way that mental health is viewed. Again, this was sort of mentioned a couple times, but never super delved into which I would have appreciated more, but the author's grandmother constantly dismissing her mother's mental illness as an actual diagnosis or something to be concerned about and the general view of severe mental health is something that I encounter quite a lot in my line of work. It's something that will take a lot of effort in combating, because as LaBrie said, her mother would probably have been fine (or at least done a lot better) if she just went to the psychiatrist and took her medications and had support with that from people in her life - but in this case, she was up against her own brain and the people around her.

Anyway, I applaud LaBrie for writing so honestly about her experiences, failures, and difficulties in her life. She was very candid about her life and did not flinch from how she portrayed herself, but it made it hard for me to sympathize and therefore connect to her and the book itself.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was cold today, but sunny, and having taken a half day because I did not feel like heading back to the office after an appointment I wandered around the city, ducking into the Morgan Library for a bit, and then just walking (12,000 steps! Woot!) and while I did that I listened to this book narrated by the author. I am not going to lie -- it was a lot -- this memoir is serious, raw, intense, and beautifully constructed. LaBrie grew up with a single mother with serious mental illness which appeared consistent with borderline personality disorder (this is mentioned in the book.) She was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her erratic and cruel behavior was explained away or normalized by family, in part because, they say, Black people don't have mental illness. The precariousness of LaBrie's environment with frequent episodes of violence and abandonment and the disconnect of attending a very exclusive Houston private school where she was surrounded by people whiter and richer than she was (though her grandmother was financially successful and she was not poor) left deep scars. Nature and nurture both play a part in the story. LaBrie's investigation showed that there was a thick vein of mental illness in the family and in the community, and that her own mother and grandmother also bore the scars from living with mentally ill caretakers and partners.

LaBrie does many things in this book. She delves deeply into her own story, her self-harm, her disordered eating (especially while at Brown and NYU) and the foundational issues, serious intransigent depression and simmering brutal rage. She also looks at larger dynamics including the intersection of mental illness and race. Many of her observations are bracing and profound. I got a lot from LaBrie's story, but her digressions regarding James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and especially Walter Benjamin were my favorite parts of this book.

It seems she was on her way to ballast at the end. I wish her and her husband (and their dog, Larry Bird) peace and stability and thank her for this book. She has moved from writing literature, which she rightly states is no longer monetizable in the age of the internet, to television, which pays a lot more bills, but I hope this is not the last book she gives us.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful memoir from a very talented writer. This touches on generational trauma, the quirks of having a white partner, finding her path as a writer and most importantly her mom’s schizophrenic break.

also, I love the fact that her dog is named Larry Bird.

[Steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Candid, raw, brave, and oh so honest - a million hugs to Sarah for a memoir that doesn’t hold back.

I’m also blown away by how humble she is; she fails to mention her great success writing for shows on television, which only shows what gratitude and humility she has.

I’m such a fan. 💛

[Carly Ceccarelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic writing with a perspective that stays with you.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I read this. Well I actually listed to the audiobook and I have some honest feelings. Let’s get into it.

First of all, I was intrigued by the synopsis. But I know for a fact that if I had tried to read a hard version of this vs listen to the audiobook, I’m sure I would have put it down. Even the audiobook was a bit rough going. The author read her own book. I know she can’t help it but her voice CONSISTENTLY grated on my nerves. It was a cross between Mindy Kaling and Alyson Hannigan at band camp. One of those tiny voices that always rears up at the end with a question. Are you asking me or telling me? I digress.

Let’s continue. The main theme of this memoir is how Sarah LaBrie discovers and attempts to deal with the mental illness in her family. She discovers that the anger issues and oddness her mother displayed in her youth was actually the early stages of Schizophrenia. As Sarah became an adult her mother’s symptoms developed into delusions and often reached a point that she nor her extended family could handle her mother. Her mother became paranoid and refused medical help. This book is mostly about Sarah’s struggle attempting to find her life while dealing with her mother’s illness.

Yet, that’s not it. I do not like to grade a memoir per se. But it is a review and my opinion of the book after all. Therefore I must say this book was a bit hard to listen to and I know it must be a struggle to read. In Sarah’s journey to find herself and her niche in the world, she was all over the place. And unfortunately that is what this book was to me. All over the place. There was not just one focus. Are we taking about her mother’s struggles with illness? Or are we now talking about Sarah’s relationships? Or are we now taking about Sarah’s writing of a novel that made no sense? Or are we now talking about Sarah’s struggles with her identity as a Black woman? Or are we now talking about German author Walter Benjamin to whom Sarah devotes countless space discussing his life and death in an attempt to juxtapose against her own but it doesn’t connect. Why are we talking about him so much? Also, the tone, not the voice but the tone of the writing was very nonchalant. It felt forced. Like she set out to write a book about her mother and got lost somewhere in the middle and needed to fill pages for a writing deadline. I believe in people getting mental health help so I was present. I understand troubled childhood trauma so I was present. But so much of this book felt like Sarah doing things to make herself feel when she actually felt numb. I wonder if this book might not have been one of those things? It was hard to care when she seemed so uncaring. In real life I wish her well. This was just my opinion of the vibe of the book. I almost want to say I’m sorry but this is what I got.

I’m going with the 3 stars. Because 2 1/2 is too harsh.

[That Book Betchhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, I’ve had to sit with this book for a few days since I finished it (positive connotation), and all I have to say is BRAVO to @itsmesarahlabrie for the masterpiece that is this story!!! And while I namely read fiction, this one seemed to catch me at the exact right time! I’m really glad that this is one of the few non-fiction reads that has graced my little eyeballs this year!

At just over 200 pages, this memoir packs an emotional punch to the heart and the soul, and addresses the complexities of mental health and its role in family trauma and drama.

This book really emotionally affected me deeply (and had the tears flowinggggg) with the beautiful way that the author was able to articulate some of the most pivotal and heartbreaking moments of her life!!! I cannot even express how much I adored every single word of this memoir, and it’ll be one I’ll never forget!

5⭐️

⭐️NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART, out NOW⭐️

Forever thank you to my friends at @harperbooks for the opportunity to read this beautiful book! Thank you for the complimentary finished copy✨

#noonegetstofallapart #sarahlabrie #harperbooks #harpercollins

[Gigi Ropp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this as a memoir about mental health and a mother with a difficult diagnosis, but it ended up reading more like a general memoir with a mother's mental health struggles mentioned. Quality content, but not as marketed.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watching a Trainwreck from a Trainwreck

I couldn't put this down. The author portrays well how it feels to watch someone descend into the throes of the schizophrenic spectrum... the utter feelings of helplessness and the fear it produces for those who might inherit the condition. The insights into what life is like for a child of someone with SSD were profound. I recommend this on Kindle so you can look up the things the author mentions - places, people, books. The struggle to be a well educated black in America come through too. 2 birds... 3 if you count Larry. ;) (inside joke for those that read the book)

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Sarah LaBrie‘s memoir about growing up Black, surrounded by privileged white folks, with a single mother who suffers from severe mental illness. It’s a short book: I read it in a single sitting, much of it with my hand covering my mouth. The book starts with her mother stopping traffic on a highway during a pretty severe episode of paranoid delusion, and it doesn’t soft-pedal at all.

LaBrie is a writer who doesn’t mince words. When she’s attending a wedding:

If I were a different person, I think, dancing, maybe my mother would still be sane… It occurs to me that my mother is almost certainly going to kill herself out of fear. The thought makes me feel heavy and tired.

LaBrie worries about her mother while also setting boundaries and taking action to keep herself healthy. She spends long stretches out of contact with her (getting updates from her grandmother and aunt, among others), and also worries that doing so makes things harder for her mother.

At the same time, she has her own future to build — connections and friendships in the arts world, a novel that she’s trying to make work, being a Black student at Brown University:

Feeling abandoned and no longer really able to go back to the apartment I share with my boyfriend, I shift into a different circle made up of white kids from high-cost-of-living cities who communicate in obscure one-liners and do bad coke and drink cheap beer. I want upward social mobility. They’re in the process of pissing away decades of generational wealth. My hope is we can meet in the middle.

Her writing is so direct it almost feels efficient, like she was working to a word count but didn’t want to miss anything. That’s not a negative: her language is so precise and succinct that you can’t look away. There’s no fat to trim in these pages.

LaBrie seems so lost in parts of No One Gets to Fall Apart, pulled in conflicting directions — wanting to set boundaries with a friend and pushing her away by doing so, or desperately worrying about her mother while afraid of being dragged back into the stress and heartbreak, knowing what’s wrong with the novel she’s been working on for years, yet seemingly incapable of fixing it. Her honesty and self-criticism is at times heartbreaking, relatable, infuriating and endearing.

She finds success in writing short stories and collaborating on opera and other musical pieces. She writes about her self-doubt, her insecurities in a world of wealthy white people, and the friction between herself (and other Black friends) and those who feel entitled to that world. Her perspective is fresh, nuanced and self-aware.

Most compelling about LaBrie’s story is the way she writes about her mother, and her volatile condition. Those with a loved one with severe mental illness will likely find a lot of this familar — the lose/lose feeling of needing to stay well while also being a caregiver, the anger and frustration of hearing a well-intentioned friend start with “You know what you should try?”, and or the bullshit platitudes like “Everything happens for a reason”. But the human brain can’t help but look for logic in these things:

Like other people who spent too much time reading as children, I grew up thinking of myself as a person in a story, all plot twists and climaxes and reversals of fortune that remained under the purview of some distant narrative force into whose hands my life had been placed. I can’t find a logical thread in it for what is happening to my mother. Her illness is unfolding according to no rules at all, and no matter how I try to hold it to-gether, the structure falls to pieces.

In the same way, it’s tempting to look for a narrative arc in this story — a happy ending or at least some kind of closure. Life doesn’t work like that. This book doesn’t really work like that either, and it’s better for it.

[Carmel Hanes · Rating 3 out of 5]

An telling account of growing up with a mentally ill parent. Mental illness can be a real beast, especially for young people trying to develop a solid sense of self. If you've had that experience, maybe tread carefully, although company can help with the misery.

[Christina]

No rating for a memoir. I loved the rawness and vulnerability that Sarah shares in this memoir. What a hard thing to share with others and I’m so glad she did. So many suffer with mental disorders and keep it hidden safely away from view. By sharing she helps others know they are not alone.

[Lisa Harker · Rating 2 out of 5]

God, this woman was insufferable.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listen to a lot of audiobooks and know how much of a difference an excellent narrator can make. Unfortunately, most good memoir writers are not great readers of their own material. This book is a perfect example of that. While I enjoyed the content, the narration by the author was not enjoyable. She speaks in a monotone, showing little emotion, even during very emotional scenes. She inserts pauses in odd places in sentences. And worst, she often slips into a sing-song way of speaking that irked me to no end.

I wanted to read this memoir because I am interested in mental illness and wished it had focused more on her mother's schizophrenia and the mother-daughter relationship. If I had to estimate, that content only accounted for about 25% of the book, with the large remainder focusing on Sarah's career, relationships (friends and significant other), travels, and so forth, which interested me less. The author is obviously very intelligent, well-read, and accomplished, but that wasn't what I was looking for.

This was bit of a letdown after reading so many five-star reviews. If you do decide to read it, I recommend actually reading it, NOT listening to the audiobook, for the reasons I've highlighted above.

[~Stephanie~ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Who in the world sold this book?! I would give it no stars if possible. It is so boring despite a seemingly interesting topic. It reads like a journal and should be just that and not for consumption of others. I just don’t get it! Do not recommend. Also not sure why I finished it except it is on the short side. I listened to the audio at 1.10x and it still seemed slowish. 6 and half hours of my life I can’t get back! 😩
This book had so many acccolades in the media. I’m learning repeatedly with crappy books like this to not trust them!
Don’t believe the hype it is NOTHING like Educated or Glass Castle!

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you Goodreads, Harper, and Sarah LaBrie.

The author shares her journey of growing up with a mother who has schizophrenia, and how that, and other generational trauma, helped shape herself and her family.

I wasn’t as interested in her relationships with her friends and partners, and I was even less interested in her work. Opera and philosophy are not really my thing.

The book is well written and ends strongly: it seems the author has found some measure of peace within herself, which is ultimately hopeful.

[Shanereads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy memoirs, and this was no exception.

I was not familiar with Sarah LaBrie, but would be interested in reading her fiction after having read No One Gets to Fall Apart. In the same vein as The Glass Castle, if you enjoy memoirs, this is a great pick!

This finished copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Huge thanks to Harper for my review copy!

[John Caleb Grenn]

NO ONE GETS TO FALL APART
By Sarah Labrie

Labrie has written a great, honest memoir centered around her mother’s diagnosis of schizophrenia.

This well-written account shines as it delicately communicates a sharp sense of anxiety associated with the process unfolding in its pages. I know at times when I’m most anxious, it feels like ALL THE THINGS of life come snowballing in together—Labrie is able to concatenate much of her professional life and romantic life’s own stresses in sequence with her experience of her mother’s progression of psychiatric symptoms in a way that allows her memoir to truly breathe—while also allowing the reader to sympathize with a dreadful sense of claustrophobia as well.

The memoir also just really captures the modern moment—tackling tech giant issues, Mars, gracefully intersecting her own story with the larger Me Too movement, as well as taking an interesting deep dive into some of the current American literary scene—there’s something for every reader here.

At the center of it all though, really, and forgive the cliche, is love. When modernity so often creeps toward nihilism, as does Labrie and I know so do many other of her readers 🙋🏻‍♂️ —the love and hope at the center of this book feels bright and genuine.

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir and know I will be rereading it soon. I also just have to say that I cannot wait to read a novel by Sarah Labrie 👀.

[Blair · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps everyone doesn’t have a memoir in them after all. Borderline unreadable

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this memoir and the way it explored the author’s relationship with her mother and her fear of inheriting her schizophrenia

[Katharine Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful writing that shows Sarah's attempt to make sense of her life and childhood with a mother who has a mental illness.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir is a heartfelt recounting of the author's struggle to come to terms with her mother's severe mental illness. However, much of her mother's struggle is situated in the background of the author's daily life--a daily life that is, despite some instances of depression due to her tumultuous childhood, mostly pretty normal. She gets jobs, writes, meets a partner, gets married, thinks about having a kid. It's a pretty conventional life, so I often found myself zoning out while I was listening to the audiobook. She spends a lot of time angsting about her mother, but nothing much happens in terms of plot--the mother calls her occasionally, or we hear secondhand about her being homeless or in and out of mental hospitals. The writing style also didn't resonate with me--it was a lot of "I did this, and then I did that, and then this happened" (and so on). Some memoirs really grip me--either because of the author's fascinating life or because the writing style is so innovative and fresh they make even the mundane details of their life fascinating. Unfortunately, this book did neither for me as reader. I can empathize with the author's struggle and I can only imagine what it's like to have an unstable mother like that, but I finished the book feeling like I got a very curated view of what really went on--almost an academic, distant perspective, rather than something visceral and real (like "I'm Glad My Mom Died," for example). Because of the narrative distance, I struggled to feel emotionally invested in the author's life or her issues with her mother. That said, another reader might get more out of this book than I did.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful and compassionate memoir about the author's relationship with her mother, who suffers from schizophrenia, and her own struggles with mental illness. I'm often wary of memoirs by the family members of sick and disabled people, but I think LaBrie writes about her mother with a lot of understanding here, without necessarily absolving her of the often brutal way she treated her as a child. It helps, of course, that LaBrie herself clearly struggles with depression and writes about that very well, too — and I don't want to minimize her own experience — but schizophrenia in particular can be pathologized in an ugly way very easily. It's clear she struggles to understand her mother at times, which is understandable, but her quest is to understand her, which I think makes the perspective work.

She also, like the best memoirists, is very hard on herself; sometimes this makes for an uncomfortable read but it also made me admire the book. Clearly, she's spent a lot of time reflecting on her relationships and how they've been affected by this primal relationship, and also how being Black has affected her and her family's experience of and reaction to mental illness and the healthcare system.

Overall, a smart and sensitive book, a good addition to the illness canon (partly) from the family perspective.

[Dree · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heartfelt and and some times hard to read memoir by an adult daughter trying to help with, grapple with, and understand her mother's apparent late-onset schizophrenia diagnosis and homelessness--while also trying to establish a career, maintain a relationship, and grapple with her own understanding of her own childhood and her mental health.

LaBrie has really put herself out there writing this--it feels very brave, but many many people will be able to relate to so much of her story. This book itself is a testament to her hard work in establishing herself as a writer, even if it is not the novel she was originally working on.

[Ann F. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really captures the mood of having a mentally ill parent

The writing is beautiful and the melancholy, disassociative voice the author adopts in telling her story is perfect. I also have a schizophrenic parent. It cast a pall of sadness, isolation, drifting aimlessness and mystery over my life - not out-and-out ruining it but always humming in the background, always a tide I was swimming against. I thought it was impossible to fully explain but the vibe of this book captures it in all of its uchy not-glory. Brava.

[paige (paigesofbookss) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ love a good memoir, especially on deep topics such as this one, yet I found it dragged at points.

[Haley Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really hated the writing style - it felt quite bland even when the content is so deep. The story overall is good though and it’s an interesting look at a disease I don’t have much experience with