HALFWAY HOUSE Katharine Noel (Piatkus, £10.99)

Before mental illness was discovered', literature had madness. From Shakespeare to Jane Bronte, fictional madmen (and women) were presented as faintly glamorous, other-worldly characters - think Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Many modern authors have followed suit, however inappropriately. Recently Patrick Bateman, of American Psycho fame, was named as an aspirational figure by a men's fashion magazine.

Noel's debut novel bucks the trend. We watch high school student Angie Voorster's psychotic breakdown and ensuing treatment utterly convinced that we're seeing the real thing. There's nothing glamorous in the destructive impact Angie's illness has on a middle-class family in modern America.

By the time Angie has found her feet again, several years and 19 cocktails of drugs after her first breakdown, her family unit has disintegrated. Her cellist father is forced to confront the mediocrity of his career and the emptiness of his life; mother Jordana, so quick to love, has nobody left to care for; and brother Luke has had his teens and early-twenties distorted by his emotional involvement with his sister's illness. In these three sub-plots, Noel shows the breadth of her skill, painstakingly describing the characters' collapsing relationships and growing introversion.

The halfway house is a place where clinically abnormal people try to live a normal life, and it serves as an apt metaphor for the imperfections and fragmentation that underlie this seemingly happy New Hampshire family. Introduce one unaccountable element - Angie's illness - and other problems quickly arrive to displace the Voorsters' cosy illusions.

Noel's well-written novel shocks us into losing any preconceptions we have about manic-depression and the impact it can have. While not at all a cheerful read, its account of suffering is real enough to make sharing it a worthwhile experience in itself.