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Title: Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D by Lizzie Simon ISBN: 0-7434-4659-3 Publisher: Atria Books Pub. Date: 25 June, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (35 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Pulls All the Punches...
Comment: Thanks, Ms. Simon! Growing up not with bipolar, but with a family tree whose history is all over the block (anxiety disorders, clinical depression, schizophrenia, agoraphobia, alcohol addiction), I commend her for writing so honestly and openly about living with a 'mental disorder', which still relates as 'crazy' to most of the modern, supposedly more enlightened world. In this quick, nicely written work, she relates what it's like to be first lost, then wildly successful, then lost again...finally on a journey to find her 'herd'...and I have felt this so many times over, feeling the affects of my family history, feeling 'lost' without that herd...Lizzie, to our, or (my own personal) benefit, realizes at the end that the 'herd' is 'her' without the 'd'...one's struggle to realize one's own destiny and come to grips with one's own self. I commend her for this brave account...she may be seen as 'self-indulgent', as many have branded Kay Redfield-Jamison (I've read both 'An Unquiet Mind' and 'Night Falls Fast'), but I say it's not self-indulgent, just the truth, raw and real. I only know one bipolar, and he's one of the most bright, intelligent persons I know...I think that if genetic research 'wiped out' the 'mental disorders' as we know them, that some of the most special, creative and brightest persons we know on this planet would not exist...and although mental illness places a great toll on families, on individuals, on society, as Lizzie explains her troubles with her families and relationships with other, the world would be a rather bland place without their insight. I think the great Abraham Lincoln (known to suffer black moods himself) once said something to the same effect. Suffer kindly your 'fools', your 'drunkards', your 'crazies'...they just might change the world.
Rating: 5
Summary: Timely first person account of life with bipolar illness
Comment: Lizzie Simon writes movingly about her struggles with bipolar illness. This book should receive plenty of attention, since more and more children and teens are being diagnosed with the condition and yet there are relatively few good first person accounts out there. This book is the best I've read so far amd a must for anyone wanting to know more about what it is like to deal with the challenges of handling the ups and downs of being bipolar.
The wrong meds can be harmful or even disastrous for bipolar individuals, especially some of the drugs routinely prescirbed for ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder (some bipolars are mistakenly diagnosed as ADD). One of Simon's episodes, in fact, was triggered when she was given an inappropriate medication, setting her off on a frenzy of hallucinations, delusions and outright pyschotic episodes. But within days of getting on the right meds, she was rational and much more in control of herself. Simon's riveting account of this period in her life underscores the importance of proper diagnosis and medication for those with bipolar illness.
Another plus of this book: Simon met and interviewed about other people with bipolar illness and shares the info here, revealing the range of personalities and individuals who have it.
I found Detour to be an inspiring, educational and very moving book - honest without being overly dramatic or hokey.
Rating: 3
Summary: Engaging, yet half-baked
Comment: This is a tricky review to write since I have tremendously mixed feelings about this book. Ms. Simon has a good voice as a writer, but this book still came across to me as half-baked. Between the pages that were three-quarters empty and the wide double-spaced lines, I felt like I was reading a final paper someone turned in for a freshman year composition class after procrastinating too long. She also comes across as elitist and cloistered, particularly when she visits the South. I mean, how worldly do you have to be to realize that people on the whole take religion pretty seriously in the South? She is dumbfounded by that. There is more to the world than Providence prep school, Paris, and Columbia. And I question her methods of tracking down successful bipolar people. I wouldn't expect to find successful (by her definition, anyway) bipolar people by contacting local public support groups. Usually you're in support groups when you're not doing so hot, then you do better and you leave. She would have been better off figuring out who the high-dollar psychiatrists were in different cities and contacting them for their successful patients. Instead we get her driving around, sort of taking a vacation, sort of working, making a bunch of calls, and hoping it falls together. And in some ways it did fall together: I really value her story of her illness and the way she described it. It was moving and gripping. Also, her interviews with the more successful people and the contrast with Nicholas was very enlightening. There are a lot of self-medicating bipolar people out there that manage to get by but are living on a knife edge. It's good to read about some people who have figured out a healthy way to manage their illness. Despite my critical tone though, I did really enjoy most of the book, but I was left wanting more, both in a positive and negative sense.
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