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857 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
857 reviews for:
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meg Kissinger
4.28 AVERAGE
emotional
sad
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This story is so compelling and tragic— especially thinking about the sister who died in 1978 and whether she could have benefited from the treatments we have available today. But— the actual book could have used some more careful editing.
I expected to love this one a lot more than I did, and I can't quite find the words to explain why. Overall, it's a well-written memoir, candid about growing up around unacknowledged mental illness. Much of her early life experiences were plagued with tragedies, which would have been completely preventable had mental health been a topic of discussion in her home and in society as a whole during this time period. [a:Meg Kissinger|20159591|Meg Kissinger|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1675173785p2/20159591.jpg] is artful in the way she handles such heavy subject matter, which made me empathetic, but lacking in any feeling of deeper connection I often have with the authors of memoirs.
“But I was learning that you can’t fast-forward through grief or read a CliffsNotes version of your life and expect to make peace with it.”
“Trauma does that to you. It steals your memory. I either couldn’t or didn’t let myself remember her or talk about her.”
“But I was learning that you can’t fast-forward through grief or read a CliffsNotes version of your life and expect to make peace with it.”
“Trauma does that to you. It steals your memory. I either couldn’t or didn’t let myself remember her or talk about her.”
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
Once I heard that the author was a journalist I knew this would be a good book. She begins the book focusing on her family’s various struggles with mental health and the grief that comes with it. The latter part of the book talks more about her career as an investigative journalist on mental healthcare. She weaves the two together really well.
I have read a lot of memoirs. What makes a book a good memoir, in my opinion, is connecting the main story and issues to a larger system or cause. This book does that super well, it’s definitely top 10 of the memoirs I’ve read for that reason. I also loved her accent in the audiobook.
I have read a lot of memoirs. What makes a book a good memoir, in my opinion, is connecting the main story and issues to a larger system or cause. This book does that super well, it’s definitely top 10 of the memoirs I’ve read for that reason. I also loved her accent in the audiobook.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced