Author: Andrew Solomon
Publisher: Vintage
Paperback
Staff Pick! Pema says…
Gotta be honest and say that I have not yet finished this massive book by Andrew Solomon about his relationship and personal history with depression. I think it’s really good though. Andrew is an incredibly confident writer and I’m so impressed with the way he’ll take you on a very big tangent that seems completely irrelevant to the topic and then bring you back 20 minutes later with a big ‘oh!’, because suddenly you understand. Many of the lines I’ve read have really stuck in my head. For example, Solomon says that while taking his antidepressants each morning he has the sense that he is ‘swallowing his own funeral’ – I thought this was really funny. He also says that the reason people write memoirs about depression is because depressed people know that the statistics and metrics scientists and doctors attempt to impose on the illness never make any sense or explain the condition in a real way. Solomon says that with depression ‘the hard numbers are the ones that lie’. This idea keeps bouncing around my head, and I can’t wait to finally finish the book, five years from now, probably.