Selling a first novel to a major publisher inevitably brings a writer much anxiety as well as joy. Few authors end up going crazy because of it. But that’s exactly what happened to British Columbia’s Jan Lars Jensen after selling his novel Shiva 3000 to Harcourt Brace in New York. His second book, Nervous System, is a memoir of the trouble he and his family endured in the aftermath of that novel.

Jensen’s slide into mental illness actually began during the run up to the novel’s publication. Before it was even printed, he found himself hospitalized. Jensen’s delusion was that his novel would precipitate the end of the world, and that, as its author, he would be assassinated. Everyone he meets seems tied into this eventuality. Because Jensen believes he’s guilty, he becomes frustrated when no one else will confirm this. He waits for the inevitable, impatient for the world to get on with killing him.

Nervous System’s form more closely resembles commercial fiction than literary or academic memoir. No time is lost with retrospective musings on the origin or meaning of events; instead, Jensen gets on with the story. He thrusts us into the scenario at the moment he arrives in hospital suspicious of all around him and alert to every danger; only later does he backtrack to tell how his troubles began. The prose is clean and sharp. Sentences are short and to the point. This makes it easy to fall into the book and be carried along.

Jensen presents his experiences largely without apology or interpretation. He gives us a sympathetic portrait of his fellow patients in the ward, and the doctors and nurses who helped him – even when he’s convinced they’re part of the conspiracy against him.

Some reflection on his experience comes in the last chapters, but no extraordinary conclusions are drawn. Jensen’s memoir is a view of mental illness from the inside by someone who can vividly express the experience. It’s also of interest as a record of pre-publication jitters gone horribly wrong.