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by: Nell Casey  List Price: $13.95 Price: $8.98 You Save: $4.97 (36%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Dewey Decimal Number: 808 Format: Bargain Price Label: Harper Perennial Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 320 Publication Date: January 01, 2002 Publisher: Harper Perennial Release Date: January 08, 2002 Studio: Harper Perennial Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: "A reader on melancholy," the editor calls this book: a collection of 22 modern essays about depression by writers (several well known) who know their subject intimately. Some face depression as a sudden interruption of a previously gratifying life; others have never known life without it. Their words wrestle to express their vision, their gloom, their attempts to cope, their interactions, their isolation, and, often, their reactions to medications. Some attempt to analyze their depression; others just want you to know what it's like. Besides the essays by writers who have experienced depression firsthand, editor Nell Casey (also a writer of one of the chapters) includes a few essays by their spouses and siblings about what it was like to live with a person suffering from depression. The writers' descriptions of "dwelling in depression's dark wood" (William Styron) are disturbing and haunting, laden with vivid imagery. "My heart pumped dread," writes Lesley Dormen. David Karp describes his depression as sometimes a "grief knot" in his throat, sometimes chest pain like a heart attack, sometimes "an awful heaviness" in his eyes and head. From her teenage years, Darcey Steinke would wrap herself in an old comforter and lie in a fetal position on top of her shoes in the closet (her brother called this her "poodle bed"). Nancy Mairs describes being institutionalized: "Lock [a woman] into a drab and dirty space with dozens of other wayward souls, make sure that she is never alone, feed her oatmeal and bananas until her bowels are starched solid, drug her to the eyeballs so that she can scarcely read or speak, and threaten to shoot bolts of electricity through her brain." If you want to know depression from the inside, from thoroughly gifted writers, you'll find it here. --Joan Price Product Description: Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of William Styron's Darkness Visible, finds vivid expression for an elusive illness suffered by more than one in five Americans today. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost includes many voices and depicts the most complete portrait of the illness. Lauren Slater eloquently describes her own perilous experience as a pregnant woman on antidepressant medication. Susanna Kaysen, writing for the first time about depression since Girl, Interrupted, criticizes herself and others for making too much of the illness. Larry McMurtry recounts the despair that descended after his quadruple bypass surgery. Meri Danquah describes the challenges of racism and depression. Ann Beattie sees melancholy as a consequence of her writing life. And Donald Hall lovingly remembers the "moody seesaw" of his relationship with his wife, Jane Kenyon. The collection also includes an illuminating series of companion pieces. Russell Banks's and Chase Twichell's essays represent husbandand-wife perspectives on depression; Rose Styron's contribution about her husband's struggle with melancholy is paired with an excerpt from William Styron's Darkness Visible; and the book's editor, Nell Casey, juxtaposes her own essay about seeing her sister through her depression with Maud Casey's account of this experience. These companion pieces portray the complicated bond -- a constant grasp for mutual understandingforged by depressives and their family members. With an introduction by Kay Redfield Jamison, Unholy Ghost allows the bewildering experience of depression to be adequately and beautifully rendered. The twenty-two stories that make up this book will offer solace and enlightenment to all readers. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - A Very Real Darkness ObservedA collection of essays by writers with depression and those who've loved them, 'Unholy Ghost' paints a vivid picture of a disease that perhaps is never taken as seriously as it deserves to be partly because its sufferers have to have a sense of humor to claim it and tame it. It is pointed out early on in the collection that the word 'depression' itself is unfairly casual by definition as it is a word that also connotates a ditch or an economic slump, like 'the blues' can trigger thoughts of BB King ... Read More Rating:  - Pretentious Dribble.Can you say Ethereal? Maybe it will help some people but I found it to be disconnected from the reality of depression, boring and a complete waste of paper. Rating: - Interesting and varied account of Melancholia.Sometimes a full book of ones personal account of depression or other illness can be too much. This book shares one chapter from each of the authors about their experience centering around their serious depression or someone close to them. I have read the full book by William Styron.. "Darkness Visible" That was excellent... ive found no other more complete account of Melancholia or more descriptive than his. Granted though, each persons depression is at least a bit different. There is one chapter ... Read More Rating: - Brilliant Collection"Unholy Ghost" is a collection of essays by a wide range of writers on the topic of depression. I read the book, an essay here and there, between novels or late at night when I was up with my baby boy. The sorts of depression explored in the book range from chronic clinical depression, to melancholy, to the sort of depression that follows some life event, like heart surgery or the end of a novel. Several of the essays are particularly good, "Bodies in the Basement," by Russel Banks, "Ghosts in the House," ... Read More Rating: - An honest read...You can't get more honest then this - straight from the heart and uncompromising and without fluff are the stories of people and their day-to-day struggles with depression and the tremendous pain that is endured through the battle of and for their lives. 
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