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 enlarge | Author: Sally Brampton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Category: Book
List Price: £15.99
Buy Used: £5.50
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New (22) Used (5) from £5.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 4348
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0747572410
EAN: 9780747572411
ASIN: 0747572410
Publication Date: January 21, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 16-19 of 19 | | « PREV | | |
 Brutal excellence February 28, 2008
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
It is a credit to any writer to have written honestly and fearlessly. To do that about depression and suicide is amazing because, as Ms Brampton shows, we simply don't comprehend it. Anyone who has been depressed needs this book, and anyone who has tried to understand someone who is needs it more. The ferocity of this illness, and its destructive power, bounce off the pages as we journey with a woman who for four years or more confronted horrible symptoms in a brutal and ignorant world. Nothing is omitted - and, as she points out, why should she be ashamed? She was ill, not a nightmare. I am baffled by the inability of the average human being to recognise that depression is an illness with symptoms. But Brampton brilliantly evokes a contradiction. In today's world we may ask, if someone feels blissful, what is wrong with them? Are they asleep to reality? Depression is an illness, but it is also a stance, a reaction, a revelation. Sally Brampton shows that the depressed ones among us are onto something. They see, they feel, they live, they know. These are the ones whom the universe has selected to feel what life really is. In their feeling, they produce honest, comprehensive, challenging documents about our world, documents that no feeling person can fail to embrace.
Cancer is cancer - implacable, boring, sad. Depression is extraordinarily complex. It takes the world apart for you, just at the moment when you personally would prefer to take the Concorde to New York for a fabulous party. It has no interest in your bullshit, your schedule or your image. It's got something to tell you and no, it won't wait.
Brampton takes her illness to pieces, finding herself to be human. Every torture of childhood, every miserable parental failing, every lonely moment, affected her. The blanks in her mind mirror those of the reader - all the horror we would all prefer to forget. She suffered, and her illness showed her how much. She listened, and she really did 'get over it'. The real tragedy of humanity is how we remain addicted to illusions and never seem to grasp that we are all such small, vulnerable beings, unprepared for life. If we could swallow that truth for a change, maybe we truly would not believe that bombs, guns, drugs and hate have ever helped us. I can't believe this book exists. The bravery and fury behind it are awesome. Depression, as it always does, has fashioned for us a woman of steel. Thank you, Sally Brampton.
Total brilliance February 27, 2008
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
Finally a book I can relate to!
I do suffer from depression and find this book inspiring and useful to see there is a way to get through life!
Sally writes with honesty and factually about the illness and offers really useful personal advice, with a little light humour thrown in.
I am particually impressed that she writes through experience, which is what attracted me to the write up I saw in a magazine.
This is a book I would recommend to anyone suffering from any form of depression. Enjoy, learn and know you can do it!
 What a shame there isn't a zero rating! February 24, 2008
7 out of 34 found this review helpful
Another writer who has failed at everything else - just look at her back titles - and thinks she can descend on a serious topic like depression. I would like to meet anyone who has undergone this type of illness for some years who has any family or "partner" who is supportive, like Sally. It is an alienating and severely disabling illness, treated in this book with a view of superficiality and triviality - just the fodder that the powers-that-be want to say that depression is not a serious illness. I would advise any serious depressive, and I mean manic and schizophrenic to avoid this publication at all costs. It is not written by a professional, i.e. doctor or psychologist. Secondly, we haven't all got the funds to fully muck up our psychology up like Brampton (privately paid for) but voluntarity did. Avoid it at all costs, it's debilitating enough just to negotiate an oppressive NHS system without being "self-helped" by the inept Brampton.
Harrowing and brilliant January 22, 2008
68 out of 69 found this review helpful
I have just finished sally's book and found it truely amazing. In fact i bawled my eyes out after reading the first few chapters when i realised her story was so like mine (and my family) and others who suffer from this truely terrifying disease. Like Sally herself, my brother had tried to kill himself recently. Thankfully, mercifully, i was never that ill.
The beauty with Sally's account is she just tells her story just as it is, and in total honesty, which is very brave. I commend her for standing up to the stigma, fear and ignornace that is out there about depression.
I love the way Sally offers some meaningfull tips and advice on how one can perhaps better cope with the disease on a day to day basis.She offers none of the usual patronising miracle cures which other so called 'experts' have often written about.
You must read this book if you know anybody who suffers from this 'black dog' or if you are a sufferer yourself. At first i was afraid to read it, but now i am so, so, glad that i did.
Truely immense.
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