Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Searching... Cabell County Public Library | 921 CHENEY C | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Chapmanville Public Library | 921 CHENEY C | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
"I didn't tell anyone that I was going to Santa Fe to kill myself."
On the outside, Terri Cheney was a highly successful, attractive Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer. But behind her seemingly flawless façade lay a dangerous secret--for the better part of her life Cheney had been battling debilitating bipolar disorder and concealing a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions meant to stabilize her moods and make her "normal."
In bursts of prose that mirror the devastating highs and extreme lows of her illness, Cheney describes her roller-coaster life with shocking honesty--from glamorous parties to a night in jail; from flying fourteen kites off the edge of a cliff in a thunderstorm to crying beneath her office desk; from electroshock therapy to a suicide attempt fueled by tequila and prescription painkillers.
With Manic, Cheney gives voice to the unarticulated madness she endured. The clinical terms used to describe her illness were so inadequate that she chose to focus instead on her own experience, in her words, "on what bipolar disorder felt like inside my own body." Here the events unfold episodically, from mood to mood, the way she lived and remembers life. In this way the reader is able to viscerally experience the incredible speeding highs of mania and the crushing blows of depression, just as Cheney did. Manic does not simply explain bipolar disorder--it takes us in its grasp and does not let go.
In the tradition of Darkness Visible and An Unquiet Mind, Manic is Girl, Interrupted with the girl all grown up. This harrowing yet hopeful book is more than just a searing insider's account of what it's really like to live with bipolar disorder. It is a testament to the sharp beauty of a life lived in extremes.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Cheney, a former L.A. entertainment lawyer, pointedly dispels expectations of a "safe ride" through this turbulent account of bipolar disorder. With evocative imagery-time-shuffled recollections meant to mirror her disorienting extremes of mood-Cheney conjures life at the mercy of a brain chemistry that yanks her from "soul-starving" despair to raucous exuberance, impetuous pursuits to paralyzing lethargy. Caught in a riptide of febrile impulse, she caroms from seductions to suicide attempts while flirting recklessly with men, danger and death, only to find more hazards in the drastic side effects of treatment. More than a train-wreck tearjerker, the memoir draws strength from salient observations that expose the frustrations of bipolar disorder, from its brutal sabotage of romance and friendship to the challenge it poses to the simplest emotions, such as "the terrors of being happy" that augur mania's onset. Though she sustains an ominous mood and relays horrifying incidents with icy candor, Cheney lightens up at times, as when she marvels at the ease of masking her condition at an office that brings out everyone's manic side. But the narrative hopscotch frustrates readers' need for grounding and context that might clear up Cheney's muddled history and satisfy readers' urge to learn the fallout of her impulse-driven episodes. Her startlingly lucid descriptions of illness merit a more concise chronology. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An attorney writes about her decades-long struggle with manic depression. It would be easier to feel sorry about the degradations, depressions and rejections Cheney has endured if she didn't spend so much time making sure that we also know how hot she is. She was a high-school varsity cheerleader, has spectacular red hair (all hers--no highlights), attracts males like moths and elicits catty comments from jealous women. She can steal your boyfriend--and will, even if you're her best friend--and out-rev you at the stoplight with her Porsche. (She got a vintage Corvette for her Sweet 16; one boyfriend drove a Lamborghini.) She graduated with honors from Vassar College, where during one of her bad periods she prowled late-night dorm corridors and ate from garbage cans. After law school, she quickly landed a prestigious job with an L.A. firm specializing in celebrity cases. For years she deceived her employers about her addiction to various prescription drugs. For years she practiced the yo-yo diet, binging and purging. She had a dozen electroshock treatments. She tried to kill herself in a variety of ways. Again, we'd feel worse for Cheney if her tortured accounts of fate's blows weren't accompanied by a parade of attractive men who find her irresistible, except for that darn mental illness of hers. The book is almost more embarrassing when she tries to tell us What She Has Learned. A Masai girl covered in sores who can nonetheless smile and a horribly disfigured woman whom Cheney comforts by stroking her beautiful blonde hair appear to exist solely to demonstrate the author's ability to see that others are actually worse off than she is. Pedestrian epiphanies like these suggest that, while Cheney may have conquered mental illness, she hasn't yet overcome the solipsism manifest on every page of her boundlessly self-absorbed memoir. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Like Kay Redfield Jamison in An Unquiet Mind (1995), formerly high-profile entertainment attorney Cheney recalls a life dictated by moods, in which, ironically enough, such treatments as electroshock (ECT) debilitated her more than it alleviated her illness. Deftly she employs the language of suffering to reconnect with the driven uberlawyer she once was and to show readers her inner isolation and anguish as she grappled with alcohol-fueled mental illness, the monster she vanquished only by surrendering to it. She depicts with startling clarity her naked immersion in freezing ocean waves at midnight during a dance of emotions she calls the riptide tango, making any dismissal of the manic act and the revelation that followed it impossible, she rivets us with her recollection of awakening in restraints in a padded room. Ultimately, she leaves attorney behind as her complete adult identity and, with time and new meds, achieves sobriety and sanity. What a ride!--Scott, Whitney Copyright 2007 Booklist