Book review: A particular kind of courage

The narrative of 'Seized' is vulnerably raw and deeply human, documenting not only illness but the endurance required to live alongside it

Aida Austin: Mother of four recounts the story of her daughter Iona’s devastating health challenges. Picture: Chani Anderson

• Seized 
• Aida Austin 
• Available online, €17.50

Writing and releasing a novel into the world is daunting for any writer, whether it is their first or 10th book. 

With fiction, authors can often shelter behind characters and imagined worlds. 

Publishing a debut memoir, however, especially one filled with intensely personal reflections that require every wall to come down, demands a particular kind of courage.

Aida Austin’s heartbreakingly beautiful memoir Seized is a testament to that bravery. 

In it, the mother of four recounts the story of her youngest daughter, Iona, and the devastating health challenges that confront the family when she was just two-and-a-half years old. 

The narrative is vulnerably raw and deeply human, documenting not only illness but the endurance required to live alongside it.

Years earlier, Aida and her husband moved their young family from London to West Cork, hoping to settle and put down roots. 

With four healthy children — two boys and two girls — they enjoyed a peaceful life in an idyllic countryside farmhouse, surrounded by routine and the comfort of normality. 

That sense of safety shatters one evening when Aida and her husband hear a strange noise coming from upstairs after the children have gone to bed. 

She doesn’t remember much after seeing her daughter’s body seizing, but the impact of the moment is scarring. 

She writes: “Family illness detonates like this: when you feel safe, your front door opens and a bomb is thrown in. Then the door closes, and you are expected to live on.”

From that point on, life is irrevocably altered. The family’s days are filled with hospital waiting rooms, writing sick notes, repeated trips to London to see surgeons, and, most frighteningly, relentless seizures, sometimes up to 80 a day. 

Aida writes about tests, from video telemetry to week-long observations, alongside strict diets and an ever-changing regimen of medications. 

The memoir captures the pure exhaustion of living on high alert, the constant vigilance it requires, and the emotional weight of living without certainty, where progress seems far away and setbacks are frequent.

One of the memoir’s most honest sections explores Aida’s internal struggle with the possibility of a cure.

Advances in medical imaging reveal a tiny lesion on Iona’s brain, a kind of birthmark, that a surgeon believes can be removed. 

After years defined by suffering and adaptation, hope itself becomes something to fear.

 Aida captures this tension with striking honesty: “So I took my longing for a cure and bundled it tightly. I pushed it down into the darker tissues of my brain and denied its right to grow… I held it down for fifteen years and made it hold its breath.”

The final chapter is written by Iona herself and offers her perspective on growing up with a severe and all-encompassing illness. 

She includes a thoughtful Q&A with her older brothers, who reflect on their childhood experiences of watching their sister live with epilepsy. 

It is a moving and beautiful conclusion that hands the narrative over to Iona, allowing her to take agency. 

Even the book’s cover, a delicate watercolour tree, is painted by Iona, reinforcing that this is, ultimately, her story.

It’s hard not to imagine how challenging it must have been to bring this memoir into being, to return to chapters of life that feel long past, and to reopen those memories in order to illuminate the struggles and offer them to the world.

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