Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

Description

"A tribute to the small, daily, and positive parts of a life interrupted by bipolar disorder" More than thirty years after the publication of his acclaimed memoir The Eden Express, Mark Vonnegut continues his story in this searingly funny, iconoclastic account of coping with mental illness, finding his calling, and learning that willpower isn't nearly enough. Here is Mark's life childhood as the son of a struggling writer, as well as the world after Mark was released from a mental hospital. At the late age of twenty-eight and after nineteen rejections, he is finally accepted to Harvard Medical School, where he gains purpose, a life, and some control over his condition. There are the manic episodes, during which he felt burdened with saving the world, juxtaposed against the real-world responsibilities of running a pediatric practice. Ultimately a tribute to the small, daily, and positive parts of a life interrupted by bipolar disorder, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So is a wise, unsentimental, and inspiring book that will resonate with generations of readers.

Mark Vonnegut is the only son of the late Kurt Vonnegut and Jane Cox Vonnegut and the author of The Eden Express- A Memoir of Insanity, an ALA Notable Book. A full-time practicing pediatrician, he lives in Massachusetts with his wife and son.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle * Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Vonnegut has written a searingly honest account of a particular kind of hell and managing to triumph despite everything-a true thing of value."-San Francisco Chronicle "[Mark] Vonnegut shares with his late father a knack for throwing down sentences-many sentences-of such naked wit and intelligence they make a reader stop for an extra beat."-San Jose Mercury News "[A] remarkable new memoir . . . many fascinating accounts of what it was like growing up with a still-struggling writer father."-The Boston Globe "Mark Vonnegut tells a strange and funny story in a strong, tensile style-at their frequent best, his sentences are like shards of colored glass: beautiful, but liable to cause damage."-Palm Beach Post "Mordantly witty, slightly subversive."-Publishers Weekly