Clinical Records | Book Review

Clinical Records is a vital book. In it, Serena Vitale tells—without a trace of sentimentality—the true story of Rossana, her older sister, a talented seventeen-year-old pianist who died in a psychiatric hospital at twenty in 1961. Through family memories and archival documents, we meet Rossana in her gifted youth; we witness the eruption of her mental illness, the love surrounding her, the decisions made on her behalf, the often harrowing attempts at treatment, and her confinement in Rome's Santa Maria della Pietà asylum. But the book is equally the story of Serena herself, thirteen years old at the time. Because illness—any illness—does not strike one person alone; it strikes an entire community. And finally, Clinical Records is a portrait of twentieth-century Italy: its struggles with mental illness, racism, emigration, family rupture, institutionalized violence, and women's emancipation.