I just ordered this book, The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks, through amazon dot com and it arrived yesterday. I have read all of 24 pages and I'm hooked. It's the kind of book that gets me so excited I can't sit still. 24 pages into this memoir of psychosis and I had to set it down and take a long walk while listening to industrial techno music. I felt the euphoria of someone who had just found somebody who was like myself.
Yes, 24 pages is all it took to make me endorse a book I barely read. From the opening scene at the Yale Law school library's rooftop to the admission of early drug use to her parents--- that's as far as I got before I realized I was reading a book up there with An Unquiet Mind and Prozac Nation.
I am so excited about this book I felt like promoting it before I even finished it. True, only a few people visit this blog, but to you, the random one person who accidentally stumbled here, I encourage you to purchase this book and give it a read.
Due to the nature of schizophrenia it is difficult to find a writer who can detail her/his illness with clarity and insight, as the illness can rob us sufferers of clarity of thought. Many of the memoirs on schizophrenia are written by the close relatives of people who suffer from the disease. There are some notable exceptions, such as the son of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who wrote Eden's Express (Mark Vonnegut).
Elyn R. Saks really comes out as a major prose writer, as well as a memoir writer, which makes her writing all the more powerful. At one point, she writes that she felt like an "insect on a pin" while being admitted to a psychiatric facility. This is too true. Sad, but honest and well-written.
Please purchase this book! It is a good way to see that a schizophrenic is just a person with a cognitive disability, someone who can nonetheless achieve goals in life.
Here's a link to the book on amazon dot com.
http://www.amazon.com/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Through
Yes, 24 pages is all it took to make me endorse a book I barely read. From the opening scene at the Yale Law school library's rooftop to the admission of early drug use to her parents--- that's as far as I got before I realized I was reading a book up there with An Unquiet Mind and Prozac Nation.
I am so excited about this book I felt like promoting it before I even finished it. True, only a few people visit this blog, but to you, the random one person who accidentally stumbled here, I encourage you to purchase this book and give it a read.
Due to the nature of schizophrenia it is difficult to find a writer who can detail her/his illness with clarity and insight, as the illness can rob us sufferers of clarity of thought. Many of the memoirs on schizophrenia are written by the close relatives of people who suffer from the disease. There are some notable exceptions, such as the son of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who wrote Eden's Express (Mark Vonnegut).
Elyn R. Saks really comes out as a major prose writer, as well as a memoir writer, which makes her writing all the more powerful. At one point, she writes that she felt like an "insect on a pin" while being admitted to a psychiatric facility. This is too true. Sad, but honest and well-written.
Please purchase this book! It is a good way to see that a schizophrenic is just a person with a cognitive disability, someone who can nonetheless achieve goals in life.
Here's a link to the book on amazon dot com.
http://www.amazon.com/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Through
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