The most recommended books about bipolar disorder

This is a book that explores deeply the role that fathers can play in our life. Lily is a transgender girl, which confounds her father and causes friction in their family. Norbert, nicknamed Dunkin, takes meditation for bipolar disorder—the same illness that caused his father to commit suicide. I appreciate this book for so many reasons; Gephart treats the transgender character with deep respect, and she doesn’t shy away from the topic of parental suicide. A children’s librarian once told me that suicide was too heavy for middle-grade fiction, but I disagree. In fact, I based a key plot point in my own novel on the experience of one of my past high school students whose father committed suicide when she was still in middle school.

This novel has everything in it that I love about Cornwall – the life and work of its artists, an incredible sense of the scenery and atmosphere, and the limpid light cast over its beauty. 

It’s also an absorbing story about the price that may have to be paid for following your star. Successful artist Rachel Kelly values creativity and self-expression, but all too often she places these above the happiness of her partner and children. Is she right or is she wrong? 

I’m recommending this book because it made me cry, and I don’t cry. The warped triangle between two divorced parents and their daughter is tragic enough, but what really stirred me was the way Willow so fiercely wants to live life with her “fun” mom, not really understanding that not everything in life is as it seems.

Jamison writes about bipolar disorder as a professor of psychiatry and as a person who suffers from the illness. This dual vision allows us to see the disorder in multifaceted ways. Jamison is particularly adept at explaining why bipolar sufferers are so tragically prone to attempt and commit suicide. I suffer from Bipolar 2 Disorder with mixed features, meaning that I can be depressed and manic at the same time. This is a dangerous combination. A depressed person is more likely to have suicidal ideation and a manic person has enough energy to make suicidal plans and carry them out. Jamison's book is vital for me to understand and manage my suicidal ideation.

I’m a sucker for Paris. Having studied abroad in the city of love, I’m drawn to the romance behind the Parisian way of life.

So, when I picked up a copy of Blame It on Paris, I knew from page one that I’d be a fan of main character Laura and her carefree travels abroad. Enter Sebastien – and the story deepens beyond a romantic fling. I couldn’t put this story down and have returned for many rereads since I first bought the book on a whim in a Paris bookshop in 2007! 

I read Darkness Visible in the midst of my worst depressive episode around 2008. I remember relating completely to his vivid descriptions of highly abstract psychological sensations, impending doom, for example, in which one feels askew to her or his surroundings, like death is imminent but you don’t know from where or how. Styron describes depression as being not unlike physical pain, and that moment in which you simply and utterly succumb to a kind of unprecedented existential suffering, if you will. It is a moment of agony, tender, fierce and absolute. Without a hint of self-indulgence, his rendering of depression is immaculate, a reckoning of the self, a crucible.

When several transsexuals turn up dead in the garbage chutes of various hotels in Cincinnati, NY, and Philadelphia, the police match the murder dates to a major league baseball team visiting at the time.

Fingers point at Teddy Moon, an ace relief pitcher who is manic-depressive and suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia.

After being interrogated by the police, Teddy realizes he has to uncover the murderer because he is being set up. Although this dark, murder mystery was written before today’s #MeToo movement, our culture wars, and celebrity obsessions, this book is an edgy send-up of everything that is wrong with today's American society.

When Teddy tells one of his wives, he lives like a monk, her salty retort, “Yeah, Rasputin,” captures the essence of the wicked dialogue filling this book. 

By the time he became a producer of reissues for Verve Records, Pullman had been immersed in Bud Powell's life and recordings for decades, and produced the best life we have of one of the most important and prodigiously talented pianists who ever lived, and who was one of the inventors of modern jazz. Powell led a chaotic life, complicated by what we would now call a bipolar personality as well as addictions and mistreatment by the law, but Pullman captures it almost day by day, including the club gigs and recording sessions, without ever bogging down in pathos.

One of the most inspirational books ever, as Stephen Haff pulls off a miracle in the little one-room, after-school free meet up, where mixed-heritage kids of all different ages and reading levels (some zero) flock to write their stories, read them, and be heard.

As an instructor, myself, I was dazzled by the generous, ingenious ways he let the kids lead, with brilliant hints and mountains of belief in them, engaging them so they mirrored his love of reading, his joy in sharing. I was impressed as they helped each other read and translate Don Quixote from old Spanish (teaching him, sometimes), create a bilingual touring musical show, and become family.

It felt so much greater than a “feel-good” book, rising to heights that included one hundred professional writers coming in to participate humbly. Salman Rushdie said, “Cervantes would be proud.” This book fills my heart with joy.

Most of the books I’ve chosen are a bit wild and frantic like my own. Sunburning is very still and quiet and so, so funny. I felt the oceans of emotions under the surface though everything is drawn in such a careful way, and the brilliant pacing recreates the strange and humourous tension of being a human in this crazy old world. The dialogue is so well-drawn and in the gaps in between it I felt I could hear the whirr of Kieiler’s busy brain. Another book to make you feel less alone.