At the age of twenty-seven, married, living in New York, and working in book design, Mary Cregan gives birth to her first child, a daughter she names Anna. But it's apparent that something is terribly wrong and two days later, Anna dies, plunging Cregan into suicidal despair. Decades later, sustained by her work, a second marriage, and a son, Cregan reflects on and attempts to make sense of this pivotal experience. Weaving together literature and research with details from her long-buried medical records, she writes of her own ordeal and the still-visible scar of a suicide attempt- while considering it as part of a larger history of our understanding of depression. She investigates the treatments she underwent, from hospitalization and shock therapy to psychotherapy and antidepressants. At once intimate and scholarly, The Scar illuminates a too often stigmatised affliction with compassion and intelligence and offers hope to all those who are still struggling.
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A fearless, candid memoir interweaving the author's descent into depression with a medical and cultural history of this illness. "The book will be passed from person to person, within families, from doctor to doctor. It will really help people... This is a book that will really matter." - Colm Toibin
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‘The book will be passed from person to person, within families, from doctor to doctor. It will really help people ... What makes the book stand out is the sheer clarity of the writing, the personal fragility and the wrestling with demons emerging here with a kind of grace, a hardwon heroism.’ —COLM TÓIBÍN ‘The Scar is a memoir unique in my experience: intensely personal, warmly and unflinchingly intimate, yet wide-ranging, informative, even scholarly – beautifully and persuasively written. Unlike any other memoir I have read touching on psychological vulnerability and the risk of suicide, The Scar reaches beyond its immediate subject to provide a cultural and historical context for that most mysterious of afflictions, “depression” ... making it particularly valuable at the present time.’ —JOYCE CAROL OATES ‘What makes this immensely helpful and beautifully written book so moving is the way the author keeps unpeeling one layer after another of her experience, with such exquisite patience and intelligence that it is impossible not to care or identify with her’ –PHILLIP LOPATE
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781843517603
Publisert
2019-04-11
Utgiver
Vendor
The Lilliput Press Ltd
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
136 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
240

Biographical note

Mary Cregan attended Middlebury College and received her PhD from Columbia University. She is a lecturer in English literature at Barnard College and lives in New York City.