Lord knows, I needed my sleep.
Instead, I was hooked. “Manic” is a short book, a series of loosely-connected intimate vignettes, like Vermeer depictions of domestic life, candid yet discreet, revealing yet mysterious, bright yet muted, exquisitely detailed yet impressionistic.
The thrill of mania, the agony of its after-effects, it’s all there, but unlike other bipolar memoirs there is no sense of bragging, no regrets. What’s done is done. All that remains is the fear.
Terri is out of the fast lane now. She has scaled down her life. She takes time out for simple joys, such as arranging flowers. She has dialed in her meds. This time - maybe - she can make it.
But, like the rest of us, there is always the fear, the knowledge that out of the blue, out of nowhere, the illness that we share can descend on her like the staff of God’s wrath.
Those hairs. Those damned little hairs.
I was wide awake when I got off the plane. I began the book somewhere 35,000 feet over Texas or Oklahoma and finished it as I was taxiing into Ronald Reagan. As soon as I got to my hotel room, I emailed Sarah at HarperCollins.
“You are the patron saint of bipolars,” I enthused.
Sarah took a big chance on me. My bipolar NOT a memoir. I like to think Terri’s book was a no-brainer, but the gifted bipolar writers tend to write books that have nothing to do with bipolar.
Yet another - yawn - bipolar memoir? Not this one.
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