A review by mmccombs
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

At first I wasn’t convinced about this book, it seemed that exploring this topic by 4ish case studies was not enough and that it would be difficult to bridge them together. I couldn’t really get into Ray’s story at the start, but once I hit Bapu’s chapter I was immediately hooked. The journalism here is so well done, well researched and done with an immense amount of compassion for the complexity of these people’s stories. Aviv never claims a “right” way to approach mental illness while also critiquing the way western medicine/psychology has pathologized the human experience. I also enjoyed the balance of her own personal experience with mental illness, it brought a depth to the text that bridged the stories towards a thematically grounded conclusion. I think this is a book that could just keep going, there is so much to take from this piece.
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