Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Dark Side of Innocence

UPS just dropped off Terri Cheney's latest book, "The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar." You may be familiar with Terri's "Manic: A Memoir," which hit the NY Times best-seller list soon after it came out in Feb, 2008.

Terri's new book hit the shops yesterday. I had a chance to read it several months ago in galley form, and had no trouble writing the following blurb, which appears on the back cover:

Rewind the life of any adult with bipolar and you will find a childhood we would all desperately like to forget. Terri Cheney unflinchingly remembers, and in the process of telling her story bears painful witness to all of ours.

I'm flattered Terri asked me to write a blurb for her. I'll get a full review out probably on Monday. In the meantime, I'll leave you with Terri's opening two sentences:

Killing yourself at any age is a seriously tricky business. But when I was seven, the odds felt insurmountable.

If you have a Kindle, you can continue reading right now ...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I look forward to your full review.
Interestingly, my childhood is something I desperately want to NOT forget, and often wish I could return to. I wonder if that is additional evidence that what I experience is not your "garden variety bipolar".

Quite a few things I've experienced seem to indicate I'm not quite like most people diagnosed as bipolar. It could just be "late onset bipolar II", or it could be somewhat more "divergent".

Anonymous said...

I relive my manic depressive childhood every single night with blindingly terrifying nightmares, pretty well every night. Guess how I feel on the subject?

Anonymous said...

I relive my manic depressive childhood each and every night with blindingly terrorizing nightmares. Guess how I feel about memory?