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Gorilla and the Bird: A memoir of madness and a mother's love de Zack McDermott

Gorilla and the Bird: A memoir of madness and a mother's love

Autor Zack McDermott
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 26 sep 2017
'One of the gems of the year' - Michele Magwood, Sunday Times (Books LIVE SA)

The story of a young man fighting to recover from a devastating psychotic break and the mother who refuses to give up on him.

Zack McDermott, a twenty-six-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed as part of an audition for a TV pilot. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from 'The Producer' to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to hospital.

So begins the story of Zack's free fall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often darkly funny struggle to claw his way back to sanity, regain his identity, and rebuild some semblance of a stable life. It's a journey that will take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him, his tough, bighearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world.

Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy SEAL and his talking stuffed monkey and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a woman who can love him back, bipolar and all.

Written with raw emotional power, humor, and tenderness, Gorilla and the Bird is a bravely honest account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780349413556
ISBN-10: 034941355X
Pagini: 288
Dimensiuni: 153 x 231 x 22 mm
Greutate: 0.38 kg
Editura: Little Brown
Colecția Piatkus
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

Recenzii

A startlingly moving memoir of mother and son, structural injustice, and inflammable mental illness. Gorilla and the Bird is as piss-cuttin' a pietà as anyone has any right to hope for. And Zack McDermott- the guy's a fleet, funny, unsentimental storyteller who manages that rare thing: he allows a damaged soul to be found.
This remarkable book illustrates Willam Osler's dictum, 'Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has.' When that disease is bipolar disorder spiked with the Truman Show delusion, and that person is Zack McDermott, a terrific and terrifically funny writer, the result is an incredibly powerful read. Zack's mother, endlessly strong and supportive, reminds us that we also need to ask what family the disease has.
Zack McDermott's portrait of a mind under assault from bipolar illness is both fascinating and heartbreaking to observe, and he takes us into his experience with riveting intensity. But McDermott's real achievement is capturing the moving determination and steadfast love of the mother who saves him, the remarkable Bird who breaks the loneliness, quiets the fear, and gives him a home worth returning to.
This book is one of the gems of the year
Breathless, funny, absurd and often completely inappropriate . . . McDermott's insights on mental illness [are] extremely refreshing. The humour and affection with which McDermott describes both his clients and his fellow psych-ward inmates never veers into mawkishness or pity - a rare quality in literature on this topic. Understandably, writers often avoid making jokes about mental illness or those who suffer from it . . . but it is this unconventional approach that makes McDermott's writing so compelling. Those of us who have ever had a psychotic episode or a breakdown, or have ever been in psychiatric hospital, will know that there's a rich vein of dark humour bubbling beneath the surface. McDermott doesn't just acknowledge that: he revels in it, and the result is utterly charming.
Despite the subject being really rather heart-wrenching, I found myself laughing out loud at regular intervals throughout Zack's memoir. This is a depiction of mental illness in all of its raw, unnerving honesty - and a true testament to the life-changing power a mother's love can deliver to you. Everybody needs a Bird in their life.

Notă biografică

Zack McDermott has worked as a public defender for The Legal Aid Society of New York. His work has appeared in theNew York Times,This American Life,Morning Edition,andGawker,among other places. He lives in New York and LA.