Madness: A Bipolar Life
by Marya Hornbacher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Marya HornbacherEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-04-09
ISBN: 0618754458
Number of pages: 299
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Book Reviews of Madness: A Bipolar Life
Book Review: Madness
Summary: 5 Stars
Marya Hornbacher's Madness is one of the most compelling books I have ever read. I do not often read nonfiction, but found myself at times forgetting that this was all true. Hornbacher has a gift with words and phrases and her writing is beautiful. At times, the story itself is disturbing, but for anyone who has lived with bipolar or someone who has it will love the book. It must have taken great courage to write a book that takes her own struggle with mental illness and use it to help others understand that they are not alone. Truly, it is one of the best books I have ever read and the single book that has most helped me understand this disease. After reading this one, I suggest you read The Center of Winter, also by Hornbacher.
Summary of Madness: A Bipolar Life
An astonishing dispatch from inside the belly of bipolar disorder, reflecting major new insightsWhen Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet have the piece of shattering knowledge that would finally make sense of the chaos of her life. At age twenty-four, Hornbacher was diagnosed with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most severe form of bipolar disorder.
In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings by self-starvation, substance abuse, numbing sex, and self-mutilation. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage -- where bipolar always beckons -- is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.
Madness delivers the revelation that Hornbacher is not alone: millions of people in America today are struggling with a variety of disorders that may disguise their bipolar disease. And Hornbacher's fiercely self-aware portrait of her own bipolar as early as age four will powerfully change, too, the current debate on whether bipolar in children actually exists.
Ten years after Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind, this storm of a memoir will revolutionize our understanding of bipolar disorder.
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