A un passo dalla felicità

There are a few parts throughout that speak well to the more universal aspects of deep depression but, for the most part, this book will be unrelatable to 99% of the people who read it even if they are familiar with the clawing despair and stone-like immobility of the depressive state. Overall, this Leggi tutto

"Perhaps depressives expect too much of life when they're not feeling depressed, have too exalted an idea of what the standard is." I haven't been very active around these parts lately, for a couple of reasons. One is that my husband and I moved to a new apartment in a new neighborhood in town, and j Leggi tutto

I’m torn about this book. I am 55 years old and have been suffering with one or another form of depression since I hit puberty, and although I did talk-therapy three times, for about a year each time, I resisted medication until thirty days ago. My life has changed. My favorite effect — so far — is t Leggi tutto

“One of the most intolerable aspects of depression is the way it insinuates itself everywhere in your life, casting a pall not only over the present but the past and the future as well, suggesting nothing but its own inevitability. For the fact is that the quiet terror of severe depression never ent Leggi tutto

meh. more aptly titled: "not at all close to happy: a reckoning with my sick mother."

Let's see. This is not a happy book, despite the word in the title. I'd din't really expect it to be, either. I stumbled across an excerpt in one of the magazines I read -- Harper's, maybe -- from early in the book, when Merkin first addresses suicide. There was a certain frankness to it, an honesty Leggi tutto

I really struggled when rating this book. There were parts that I think were a 5 and others that were more of a 2 so I’m splitting the difference and going with a 3. This is a really interesting account of clinical depression. There is a lot of pain expressed in this book. It’s not always easy to re Leggi tutto

This is one of those "I really wanted and tried to like it" books. Merkin is a thoughtful descriptive writer and begins by making a pretty strong case for why there need to be more women writing about depression. A good start, I thought. For me, however, the problem was that the book is really more

I was completely riveted by Merkin's "reckoning with depression," which also felt like a reckoning with life itself. The author successfully jumps forward and backward through time, weaving a personal history of depression that is at once nuanced and straightforward. I've never read a personal accou Leggi tutto

As much a memoir of a tangled mother-daughter relationship as it is one of depression, this book captivated me with its unflinching look at the author's journey in and out of major depressive episodes. Merkin is a terrific writer and an erudite person who applies rigor and curiosity to her examinati Leggi tutto