Beautiful, fresh . . . Rausing, a well-known author and publisher in London, here turns our attention to dark machinations in her own family. Her story is told while the psychological force of the events is still raw, and the final toll on the survivors unknown. Mayhem is a work of Nordic noir. We have become used that form on television, yet in this book it returns to its literary origins: Ibsen would have recognized the human conditions, if not the material ones, that underpin the Rausing family disaster-[the] miasma of modern addiction. Yet in Rausing's hands, there is no vulgarity: the effort becomes the will of philosophy to interrogate shame, to meet torment with reason. Like the roving eye in Joyce's 'The Dead,' we can do little else but scan the rooms for clues that might tell us why it happened. Rausing knows she must interrogate the pain from every angle, including the angles that discomfort her. Rausing has serenity, courage, and wisdom, and her book casts, on the reader, a spell. She has a gift for wielding paragraphs that will stay in the mind. [Written] with loving intelligence and care, Mayhem thinks its way through the madness, seeing it for what it is. -Andrew O'Hagan, The New York Review of Books

In this mesmerizing account of her brother's descent into addiction and her sister-in-law's untimely death, Sigrid Rausing explores sweeping questions about what it means to choose or refuse a moral life; what tragedy looks like when it is woven into privilege; and how we control or surrender to our perceived destinies. Written in elegiac, lyrical prose, Mayhem is deeply passionate in its impossible attempt to adduce a redeeming vitality from an agonizing chaos. This is a brave, elegant, inspired book. -Andrew Solomon

A profoundly articulate and harrowing memoir of a family grappling with addiction. With love and tenderness, respect and reserve, Sigrid Rausing explores the evolution of her brother and sister-in-law's addiction and its effect on her entire family. Her deftly layered observations about how one can be both knowing and not knowing capture a parent's innate sense of a child's being in danger; one sibling's desperate attempts to save another; and a deeply private family who find themselves suddenly exposed. Ultimately, what Rausing finds is a way to tell her own story, including among objects from the past that remind her of what once was, or might have been. I was impressed and moved. -A. M. Homes

A stylish and devastatingly lucid memoir. . .The narrative resonates because Rausing, a private person, shares intimate memories; as she understands it, addiction is not only a family disease, but also an 'endlessly revolving merry-go-round' that keeps addicts and family members trapped. . . . Piercing. -Kirkus

In this intimate and compassionate memoir, Rausing recounts the lives of her brother Hans and her sister-in-law Eva, who were addicted to drugs... Rausing explores [her family's] tragedy with grace, humility, and razor-sharp insight. Throughout she attempts to better understand the fierce compulsions of addiction. Her writing is rich with humble wisdom. -Publishers Weekly

Rausing's core message is this: Addiction is a family affair. Her book embraces those surrounding the addict by courageously exposing her own self-doubt and heartache, her anguish over who's accountable. -Martha Ann Toll, NPR Books

A loving, anguished, and very honest account. . . In this memoir about a brother and sister-in-law who were dangerously [addicted to] drugs, Rausing addresses the question of what we owe the addict as friends and family. What is noteworthy and moving is that Rausing writes without any righteousness. -Kerri Miller, Minnesota Public Radio (NPR)

My sister's heroin addiction infused my family's life with pain, confusion, terror, exasperation and guilt. I spent a week reading Rausing's quiet, meditative new book about her brother's drug addiction and its impact on their family. O