This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.14 (753 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1250159296 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-08-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Daphne Merkin is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and a regular contributor to ELLE. Her writing frequently appears in The New York Times, Bookforum, Departures, Travel + Leisure, W, Vogue, Tablet Magazine, and other publications. Her previous books include Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best novel on a Jewish theme, and two collections of essays, Dreaming
"Insightful, helpful firsthand account of depression" according to Rose. I read this while severely depressed and found it helpful. This isn't the point of the book—it's a beautifully-written, insightful, firsthand account of someone's lifelong struggle with depression—but as I imagine a large number of people who pick up this book will, like me, be looking for some insight into their own situation, I'll say that I, for one, found some. I, like Daphne, sometimes struggle to accept depression as an illness as opposed to a personal failing, even as . A very good book with several flaws. readernyc I quite loved Merkin's literary asides, I am a reader as well. This book definely brought me into depression, a mood disorder I don't happen to have but the writing here is somehow contagious. I didn't mind that terrible feeling as it lifted when I finished the book. Merkin's strength here is showing in blazingly purposeful detail: The parents, the other kids, and her childhood. If one image stands out for me it is of her Jewish mother drawing Nazi imagery on her arms. I mean, these pare. Susan M. Baumann said Depression Unmasked. Brilliant, scathing, heartbreaking and raw. This is the most powerfully honest book on depression and child abuse that I have ever read. Merkin's bereft childhood of brutality and lack seems to be the fertile ground that created her despondency and the tenacious, pervasive longing for suicide. Her parents appear blatantly psychologically disordered, meting out damage as casually as one would order lunch. Merkin is by turns, attached to, and repelled by, a vicious mother, who seems both s
Her candor discussing the fears, tribulations, and triumphs of a lifetime of treatment will be valuable for anyone who loves someone with depression but makes necessary reading for the mental health professionals on the other side of the couch." Harold S. Merkin speaks candidly and beautifully about aspects of the human condition that usually remain pointedly silent." John Kaag, Wall Street Journal"Wry, self-aware a work of lacerating intelligence about a condition that intellect cannot heal." The New Yorker"A triumph on many levels As insightful and beautifully written as it is brave This Close
The book ends in the present, where the writer has learned how to navigate her depression, if not "cure" it, after a third hospitalization in the wake of her mother's death.. She recounts the travails of growing up in a large, affluent family where there was a paucity of love and basics such as food and clothing despite the presence of a chauffeur and a cook. Merkin also discusses her visits to various therapists and psychopharmocologists, which enables her to probe the causes of depression and its various treatments. A gifted and audacious writer confronts her lifelong battle with depression and her search for releaseThis Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime.Taking off from essays on depression she has written for the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sor