Why did I love this book?
This is quite simply the best memoir about bipolar disorder that I've ever read. It's a beautifully written epic that details the ways in which bipolar disorder can lead to eating disorders, substance abuse, and self-mutilation. Hornbacher writes non-fiction like a poet. Like Hornbacher, I've spent weeks in residential mental health care treatment. And she writes so compellingly about the fear and rage inherent during hospital stays and also about the joy of emerging from treatment as a healthier and more hopeful person.
2 authors picked Madness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of Wasted, Marya Hornbacher's astonishing New York Times best-selling memoir from the belly of bipolar disorder.
Marya Hornbacher tells the story that until recently she had no idea was hers to tell: that of her life with Type I ultra-rapid-cycle bipolar disorder, the most severe form of bipolar disease.
In Madness, Hornbacher relates that bipolar can spawn eating disorders, substance abuse, promiscuity, and self-mutilation, and that for too long these symptoms have masked, for many of the three million people in America with bipolar, their underlying illness. Hornbacher’s fiercely self-aware portrait of bipolar, starting as early as…