Loony Afternoons

The weird thing about depression is that, even though you might have suicidal thoughts, the fear of death is the same

Matt Haig

Well this is novel. Me actually fulfilling a commitment to writing something as promised in my last post. And btw it hasn’t taken me this long to finish The Silver Linings Playbook. I just needed time to consider what it meant to me – honest.

I picked up this book because I saw the film – which I very much enjoyed. I also picked up this book because it deals with mental instabilities. It’s actually the second book on the trot that I have read which has addressed this topic – the previous was Under the Same Stars by Tim Lott. Whereas that story was less about the ongoing battle inside the protagonist’s head – though we learn fairly early on he has suffered depression and continues to take (or not) medication – our hero in Pillowbook (Pat) is in constant mental turmoil about what he knows, what he remembers, the pressure to change his behaviour, holding back on anger and frustration, fear of “the bad place”. And I guess this is why the film just doesn’t cut it. Certainly not in representing the details of Pat’s constant fragility or communicating the various strands of his mental state. Can a film ever do that I wonder. I suspect it probably can, and may well have done in the past – my movie knowledge is not that extensive – but an Oscar destined and money-spinning film is less likely to come close to portraying the reality.
Anyway. I digress. This post is intended to be a book review not a film critique.
So. This is a great read. Told in the first person it gives incredibly moving insight into the mindset of Pat. His everyday train of thought is portrayed honestly – sometimes raw, sometimes comically, often desperately. He strives to be good, caring and a better person so that his dream, his raison d’être can be realised.
We meet him as he is released from a psychiatric facility on the understanding that his previous behaviour and actions (we don’t learn what these were just yet) change. He moves back in with his parents – a loving mum that tries very hard to protect his fragility; a dad who simply doesn’t know how to deal with his own life anymore, let alone Pat’s. Soon the dynamic of Pat’s new life changes when he meets a kindred spirit in the form of Tiffany. She’s been through difficult times that effect her current mental well-being – though these materialise in different ways to Pat’s. They strike up a kind of friendship based initially on a deal of mutual benefit.
I’ll leave my synopsis there. Leave it up to you to read and enjoy. However I wanted to finish with how this book made me feel about my own experiences because I absolutely felt my way through this book – if you get me. I was often moved to tears because it touched something in me that was very personal, something that’s difficult to put into words, something that I know others will have felt. The author, knowingly or not, did something for me that no amount of therapy or even talking with piers hadn’t managed to reach. I can’t explain it and sorry it’s so vague. Please please read the book, even if you have seen the film. Even if you haven’t been to the place (or anywhere near) that Pat talks about because I don’t think that this book can fail to find something in you that you may well not have known before.

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First things first. I KNOW I used the word “movie” and not “film” in the title of the post. You may argue that I’m British, it’s a British blog and therefore I should use UK English not American English. But can any blog be termed as being of one particular country? And given that most speakers of English are not from the UK then I thought I would take a more international approach – that and the fact that dumb Americans get easily confused. Joking.

This was supposed to be a teeny tiny post. More of a status update, Facebook or Twitter style. But I’ve rambled already. So. Enough of that, and here it is, short and sweet:

“Am reading The Silver Linings Playbook. Seen the movie but the book is, naturally, better. Much more touching and connecting. A proper post will come when I finish it”.

Not quite sure of the point raised here by Ruby Wax in her article in The Guardian newspaper. The pessimist in me says ‘book promotion’ but then the narrative suggests a selflessness about the work Ruby has done. Click on the link and come back to me.

Would I use such a forum? I’d like to think I would. But then mental health issues span such a wide spectrum that any gathering would perhaps lose it’s purpose through lack of commonality between attendees – yes we’d all have a ‘mental illness’ label about our person but the person sitting to my right may be schizophrenic and the person to my left may have some kind of psychosis. And there’s little ole me in the middle with my depression and anxiety issues.

Personally I’m growing not to like the whole 1-in-4 statistic because although the aim of that was to create awareness of mental health issues and to de-stigmatise, I’m a little suspicious of how that statistic came about and what it represents. It’s also used too much.
Ok. Nuff said