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Published: 10/02/2022
In this arresting, exceptionally moving account of his mental breakdown and recovery, the acclaimed travel and nature writer Horatio Clare examines crucial questions about severe mental illnesses with urgency and compassion.
Heavy Light is the story of a breakdown: a journey through mania, psychosis and treatment in a psychiatric hospital, and onwards to release, recovery and healing.
After a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act. From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we can be healed - or not - by treatment.
A story of the wonder and intensity of the manic experience, as well as its peril and strangeness, it is shot through with the love, kindness, humour and care of those who deal with someone who becomes dangerously ill.
Partly a tribute to those who looked after Horatio, from family and friends to strangers and professionals, and partly an investigation into how we understand and treat acute crises of mental health, Heavy Light's beauty, power and compassion illuminate a fundamental part of human experience. It asks urgent questions about mental health that affect each and every one of us.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781529112641
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 244 g
Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 20 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
A beautiful, unflinchingly honest book about madness, mania, parenting, surviving and, above all, love and its power to heal us - Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life and Breathtaking
A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better, that forensically tracks the footprints of both journeys towards a settlement with the self - Jeanette Winterson
Readers of Clare's game-changing memoir . . . will be struck by the fact that a mind so recently dominated by straight-to-DVD fantasies is now capable of reflecting on them with so much gentle wisdom and acute self-awareness. And in such beautiful, witty prose - Daily Telegraph
Hard-hitting but tender-hearted . . . Clare thoughtfully and determinedly seeks to challenge the status-quo on treatment for mental health conditions - Independent
What a gift...having such an articulate agent, reporting back from the far edges of the mind - Sunday Times
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“Thank you Horatio…”
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