Hurry Down Sunshine
A father's memoir of love and madness
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
A poignant account of the descent into madness of the author's teenage daughter
'Touching, warmly intimate and unsparing' Joyce Carol Oates
'Lucid, realistic, compassionate, illuminating. In its detail, depth, richness and sheer intelligence, Hurry Down Sunshine will be recognized as a classic of its kind' New York Review of Books
'Restrained yet candid, it's a beautifully written book' Guardian
One summer evening Michael Greenberg's daughter Sally was brought home by the police after rushing into a busy road in Greenwich Village, convinced she could halt the oncoming traffic. The mania had come over her abruptly: her habit of poring obsessively over poems late into the night or listening to music on her battered walkman for hours could be considered 'normal' teenage behaviour, and yet it was a clue to the internal tumult that was about to overwhelm her. Now her behaviour had moved from the realm of the adolescent and eccentric to the acutely unstable, and she needed professional help.
And so just a few days later Michael found himself in the surreal world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city's most sweltering months. Confused, anxious, looking for answers, he asked himself whether he was to blame. Perhaps this illness had been Sally's genetic inheritance. Perhaps, as a writer, he hadn't been able to provide the secure and stable home she needed. Sally's mother had left some time ago, finding life in the city suffocating, and his new wife, Pat, had not found it easy building a relationship with his clever, headstrong daughter. But looking around him at the other concerned families in the waiting room, he began to realise that the answers to his questions were not so simple.
Touching, memorable and unsentimental, Hurry Down Sunshine is partly an insightful exploration of what mental illness has come to mean in our culture, and partly a moving memoir about how one family learns to cope with the prejudice and uncertainty that faces those affected by it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greenberg, a columnist for London's Times Literary Supplement, was living in Greenwich Village in 1996 when his 15-year-old daughter, Sally, suddenly became manic, importuning strangers and ranting in the streets about her newfound cosmic wisdom. She was a danger to herself and others, so her father and stepmother had her committed to a psychiatric facility. Greenberg was no stranger to mental illness; he'd been caring for his dysfunctional brother most of their adult lives. Still, Sally was so brilliant, so caring, he couldn't bear the thought of her ending up like his brother. During the 24 long days Sally spent in the hospital, Greenberg learned to cope. He watched a Hasidic family visiting with their mentally ill young man. He pondered his ex-wife going to cuddle with Sally, as if she were still a little girl. He listened to his mother explain her troubled marriage and the subsequent mental illness of his brother. He wondered at his present wife's resilience. After Sally's discharge, questions of how they would adjust to their new lives were complicated in very different ways. In this well-written and sincere memoir, Greenberg proves to be a caring man trying to find his way through the minefield of a loved one's madness.