Sigrid Rausing

After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious like Tombs.
--Emily Dickinson

Mayhem is a powerful meditation on addiction, on how it maims not only the addict but also his or her family. With this reflective, literary, and allusive memoir, Rausing attempts to wrest the highly publicized and lurid narrative of her billionaire/philanthropist brother (Hans) and sister-in-law (Eva)’s long spiral into heroin and cocaine addiction from a media that reveled in splashing the show more sensational details of the case across newspaper pages. Rausing has been denounced—“condemned”, in fact—by the Kemenys, her sister-in-law’s family. The family regards her decision to publish a memoir as selfish. For them, it is a painful and unnecessary resurrection of a story that ought to have been laid to rest. The Kemenys are incensed at what they perceive to be a misrepresentation of their daughter and sister. They blame Rausing’s taking custody of Eva’s children for Eva’s despair and death.

I feel for the Kemeny family and understand why its members would be opposed to seeing this sad story brought back for viewing. At the same time, I do not feel that Sigrid Rausing “trashed” her sister-in-law in any way. Her treatment of Eva is sensitive and sympathetic. No doubt the Kemeny family members have their own understanding of what occurred, but they should not fear that Eva is represented in an insensitive or unsympathetic way in Rausing’s book. Furthermore, I do not see how anyone could argue that it was appropriate for Eva’s four children to remain with her and her husband. Yes, addicts love their children, but their relationship with the addictive substance is stronger than anything else. Addicts, including alcoholics, cannot parent. They are, for all intents and purposes, unavailable to do so.

Because of its literary allusions, Mayhem has been criticized as “pretentious”. I didn’t find it so. For me, it represents an effort to make sense of what happened, but it is also a powerful book of mourning. It offers something valuable to the families of others who have also clung to the wreckage left by addiction. show less

Sigrid Rausing is the editor and publisher of Granta magazine, as well as being one of the heirs to the Tetra Pak business and fortune. This is her memoir of the relapse into extreme drug addiction of her brother Hans and his wife Eva, a slide into dependency that leads to Eva's death in lurid, tabloid circumstances.

As the author herself admits, there is a lot here that she is not saying, and that makes this a slightly odd book. Therapeutic for the author perhaps, and goodness knows she and show more her family have had a lot to put up with, but a surreal experience for the disinterested reader. Eva's family have criticised the book and its easy to see why, as Eva gets a particularly hard time in this account, whilst the author's brother gets off much more lightly, perhaps because he communicates with his sister much less that his wife does.

But its worth reading though; perhaps because we have all seen so much Nordic noir, the idyllic rural childhood reminiscences seem fraught with danger. Surely something nasty is about to be revealed in the woodshed? And sure enough there are strands of madness and depression to be found. Are these the precursors of addiction? Rausing builds the tension nicely, even though the reader knows where we are going

And its a very bleak place we get to. Narratives of addiction usually focus on the less privileged in society; poverty, abuse, lack of opportunity, addiction. Its a familiar tale. Its far rarer to hear of a couple for whom money is no object - and indeed have household staff running their $70 million home - holed up in a locked second floor drug den consuming industrial scale quantities of crack, cocaine, and heroin when not acting as philanthropists for various drug related charities.

As I say, a lot of the gruesome details are missing, and its a one sided view. Is there more, or perhaps less to the story of how the author became the guardian of her brothers' children? Is there anything more to the connection with the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme than Eva's paranoid, drug induced ravings?

But its a very intimate story of the pain of extreme dependency, extremely well written show less

It read like a storyline from the latest thriller. In a £70 million pound mansion in the plushest part of London, in a drug den sealed with duct tape, human remains were found covered by a tarpaulin and a couple of flat screen TVs. The staff were told not to enter the room and with the discretion that the ultra-rich demand, none thought to question the reason why, nor disobey. This wasn't a bestseller though; it was real life. The remains were the body of Eva Rausing, wife of Hans Kristian show more Rausing, heir to the multi-billion Tetra Pak fortune. The couple had long been addicted to Class A drugs and had often been in the newspapers with the journeys in and out of rehab. Her death of a heart problem had not been ignored by Hans, but his drug-addled state caused him to take actions that a person in normal circumstances would not have done.

Watching Hans and his Eva's lives implode was Han's sister, the editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing. She hadn't really paid attention when he first had become addicted to drugs in his twenties but saw them both relapse after being married for seven happy years. As the drug use spiralled out of control again they drifted in and out of rehab, she took to writing persuasive letters and emails trying to help them with the predicaments. This supportive help failed, but after taking advice she became the legal custodian of their four children, something that Eva strongly objected to claiming that Sigrid wanted the extra children for herself, something that she rebuts in the book.

It is a very personal and open memoir, with stories of her childhood growing up in Sweden and the small pleasures of life that she recalls in snippets. The core theme of the book though is addiction, and how an individual can become so absorbed that the neglect friends, family and themselves. She asks the question how do you help someone with an addiction? Especially if they really don't want to be helped at all, how the twelve step process does work, but after someone has relapsed and entered rehab again, it is easy to repeat the things that those running the centres want to hear, with no real commitment to their meaning or purpose. There are deeper questions too about where the line is where someone is knowing what they are doing and the point where that stops because of the addiction and mental capacity.

It is not an easy read subject wise, thankfully Rausing's sparse but beautiful writing helps makes this an essential read. She is brutally honest about her own life and the failures in helping Hans and Eva, but also now understands the limits of what she could actually do at the time. She doesn't and cannot provide the answers of where to go to get the help that people need, but does highlight how little is understood about addiction and how society can tackle the pain and anguish it causes. show less

Solid offering, non-fiction strolling and living around UK nuclear reactor complex, Haiti afterhours underworlds, similar for Senegal and a sardine fish house, visiting Florida retiree parents. Better than expected short fiction on growing up classmate of the queen, a chess club upset