The Bullet

In August 2014, Tom Lee and his parents drove out to visit Severalls Hospital, a former in-patient psychiatric hospital. Closed since the 1990s, as part of a nationwide shuttering of psychiatric institutions, the buildings now stand derelict and overgrown. But in the recent past, the name ‘Severalls’ resounded with dread and fear, entering local lexicon as a place where the strange, deranged and dangerous were ‘kept away’. Among those strange, deranged and dangerous people were Tom’s own parents.

The Bullet is a memoir of their time in Severalls, and the breakdowns and difficulties that led them there – often against their will. It is also Tom’s own story of his struggle with his fragmenting mental health – a hereditary bullet he believed he’d dodged – and the extraordinary physical crises that precipitated them. Deeply moving, clear-sighted and enormously poignant, The Bullet is a window onto the treatment of mental health disorders in the UK, and a searing analysis of living with a fracturing mind.

Author Biography

Tom Lee is the author of The Alarming Palsy of James Orr, a novel, and Greenfly, a collection of short stories. He lives in South London and teaches at Goldsmiths.