Top 5 Wednesday: Books Featuring Mental Health

 

 

Here are my reviews:

Too Bright to Hear too Loud to See, my review is here.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham  (I chose not to review this book, though it was interesting).

Looking For Alaska by John Green, my review is here.

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, while I have never reviewed this book, it is my favorite by Fitzgerald and was the first book I read that had mental illness as a topic. In the 1970s this was not very common–especially in a book in a high school library. I was on a Fitzgerald love affair at the time but this book gave me insight to some of the problems in my family that I had previously been too young to understand.

 

Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

(review from my old blog)

Mr. Chartwell is a delightful little book–how odd to say “delightful” about a story centered on depression! But, it IS delightful! (The book, of course, not depression!) It’s the week of Sir Winston Churchill’s long-long delayed retirement from Parliament. Now in his 89th year and only months from death, Sir Winston’s “black dog,” as he called depression, has come to life and is visiting House of Common’s library clerk, Esther who soon is called to a rendevous with destiny at Chartwell, Sir Winston’s home, as his substitute secretary. “Black Pat,” the dog who arrives at Esther’s home to rent her spare room and calling himself “Mr. Chartwell,” is the palpable presence of depression in the most literal sense. He is a huge, hairy black dog who tries to suck the life, the will, the energy out of his “clients.”

As a sufferer of depression who has been in what I call “the fog” of depression at various times since high school, I loved this book for the very real way it describes just what the “Black Dog” does to those of us whose lives it entangles. As the parent of a sufferer of depression, I wish this book had been around when my child was younger–it’s such a great way to help someone understand what depression does in a life.

As for the fateful meeting of Esther and Sir Winston, I’ll leave that for you to read about!

 

One Extra

 

“The secret of contentment lay in ignoring many things completely.”

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Rarely have I read people write such rude reviews of a book! I LOVED it.Here’s the trick: I had not read anything by Haddon before. I went on to enjoy The Red House, too. I have never made it thru the work he is so beloved for: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Movie

A Beautiful Mind still gives me the occasional nightmare and I saw it, shockingly, in the theater its first week out. I cried for days. What a torture they put him thru. Not for the faint of heart.

 

For more information on Mental Health Awareness Week and Mental Health Day click here.