Review: Hurry Down Sunshine
A Personal Memoir Chronicles the Effects of Bipolar Disease
Life for those stricken by this disease as well as their loved ones, friends and acquaintances is quite an adventure to say the least. It is a series of some of the wildest ups and downs of mania and depression, and it is always subject to the unknown.
In Hurry Down Sunshine, author Michael Greenberg takes the reader along on the adventure that was the first manic episode his daughter Sally experienced. He describes that extraordinary summer as the time when his fifteen year old daughter was struck mad on the streets of Greenwich Village.
Greeberg uses the term “crack-up” in the first paragraph of the book and it has been said to be offensive to some. This includes those who suffer from mental illness, their friends, families and therapists. While their criticism is valid and addresses much of the stigma that affects everyone whose life is touched by mental illness, the point remains that this is the author’s personal journey and story. It documents how he envisions the events of that sultry summer and how they effect and change his own life as well as the the lives of those he loves.
The book takes place in Manhattan in the summer of 1996 as Sally journeys through psychiatric wards and takes her father, mother, stepmother, brother and grandmother along for one of the most eye-opening wildest rides of their lives. In a moment of lucidity she expresses that she feels like she is ‘traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to.”
Some will also criticize that Greenberg uses terms such as narcoleptics incorrectly when referring to drugs such as Zyprexia, which is, in fact, a neuroleptic drug. Indeed the book is not meant to be a textbook and should not be used as such. Consumers, providers and family of those who suffer from mental illness should not use the book as a tool or a guide to direct them through their own process.
First of all the book was written from first hand experiences over a decade ago. Specific treatments, evaluation processes, and medications have changed over time. What it should be seen as is a writing from the heart and soul of a man who loves his daughter deeply and is consumed with the confusion, sadness and anger that is so much a common thread among those who have faced similar situations.
Greenberg writes of his own experience of bipolar disease from the inside and the outside of the disease as it affects the family, friends and lives of those affected by mental illness. To that effort, Hurry down Sunshine is a beautiful memoir to his daughter and her struggle.
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg. © 2008 by Other Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-59051-191-6.
Hurry Down Sunshine
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