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A review by lajacquerie
Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So by Mark Vonnegut
4.0
To be honest, I'm not really a fan of Kurt Vonnegut--and I didn't even know he had a son. Thankfully, Mark is just as quietly clever and humorous as his father, without even resorting to fiction.
Yes, I grabbed this book because having someone in your life with mental illness makes you more interested in learning about it--but let's be serious, I would still love a book about crazy people anyway (side mind tangent while I tried to apply that analogy to other illnesses--would I still think a book about gangrene would be interesting even if I didn't know someone who had it? Yes, probably, as long as it didn't have pictures). The best part about Mark's writing style is that he doesn't try to explain; there's no excuses, no rationalizing, no picking apart the medical underpinnings. And, no apologies. He describes the mental breaks that ended with him being hospitalized with regret and clearly wants to return to his life, his family--but he also accepts that there's some part of him that really does believe he talked with van Gogh, Mark Twain, and Abraham Lincoln... and he's glad that they had the chance to become friends.
He also gives some straight-forward thoughts on the medical establishment today, what it was like serving on the Harvard Med School applicant review board, and tells about his charity medical trip to Haiti. Coming from a doctor whose main goal is to actually help people, these thoughts are refreshing and honest without necessarily being uplifting.
In fact, much of the book is like that--he's truthful about his illness (bipolar disorder according to the jacket, diagnosed differently earlier in his life) and is very frank about the effects it can have. But he kept on living, and then he wrote about it... which means that anyone else can too.
He ends with a mini chapter about how in his old age he's gotten into hunting mushrooms, but then almost kills himself by eating a poisonous one. How can you beat that?
Yes, I grabbed this book because having someone in your life with mental illness makes you more interested in learning about it--but let's be serious, I would still love a book about crazy people anyway (side mind tangent while I tried to apply that analogy to other illnesses--would I still think a book about gangrene would be interesting even if I didn't know someone who had it? Yes, probably, as long as it didn't have pictures). The best part about Mark's writing style is that he doesn't try to explain; there's no excuses, no rationalizing, no picking apart the medical underpinnings. And, no apologies. He describes the mental breaks that ended with him being hospitalized with regret and clearly wants to return to his life, his family--but he also accepts that there's some part of him that really does believe he talked with van Gogh, Mark Twain, and Abraham Lincoln... and he's glad that they had the chance to become friends.
He also gives some straight-forward thoughts on the medical establishment today, what it was like serving on the Harvard Med School applicant review board, and tells about his charity medical trip to Haiti. Coming from a doctor whose main goal is to actually help people, these thoughts are refreshing and honest without necessarily being uplifting.
In fact, much of the book is like that--he's truthful about his illness (bipolar disorder according to the jacket, diagnosed differently earlier in his life) and is very frank about the effects it can have. But he kept on living, and then he wrote about it... which means that anyone else can too.
He ends with a mini chapter about how in his old age he's gotten into hunting mushrooms, but then almost kills himself by eating a poisonous one. How can you beat that?