Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin

This book really made me think about form and content and mashup possibilities. While I don't think this book was successful, I had to think good and hard about why I found it so distasteful to read.

I really wanted to like it, or at least find it interesting, but Vincent's prose is full of platitudes and generalizations, and lacks (it seems to me) the kind of right-on research that makes journalism like this worth reading. I understand this book turned into something of a memoir as it was being written, but it just doesn't work as a hybrid. I wish it had either been a bit more messy, or a lot less messy.

But as it stands, the prose is often personal when it should be professional, overly-political when it should be forgiving and curious, and strangely sanctimonious (even though Vincent is at first up front about her privileged background, she soon stops being critical about her place in the system and instead turns to some pretty strange self-flagellation as a replacement for real analysis) when she finds herself backed against walls - both literally and figuratively.

I really admire Vincent's reach here, though, and I will probably always pick up her books to see where she's tried to go next. ( )

This book really made me think about form and content and mashup possibilities. While I don't think this book was successful, I had to think good and hard about why I found it so distasteful to read.

I really wanted to like it, or at least find it interesting, but Vincent's prose is full of platitudes and generalizations, and lacks (it seems to me) the kind of right-on research that makes journalism like this worth reading. I understand this book turned into something of a memoir as it was being written, but it just doesn't work as a hybrid. I wish it had either been a bit more messy, or a lot less messy.

But as it stands, the prose is often personal when it should be professional, overly-political when it should be forgiving and curious, and strangely sanctimonious (even though Vincent is at first up front about her privileged background, she soon stops being critical about her place in the system and instead turns to some pretty strange self-flagellation as a replacement for real analysis) when she finds herself backed against walls - both literally and figuratively.

I really admire Vincent's reach here, though, and I will probably always pick up her books to see where she's tried to go next. ( )

I did not

a) like the way this author writes. She turns phrases in an attempt be clever but usually just ends up writing something at best tangential to her main point.

b) really like this author as a person.

I did finish this book, which says something, but I wouldn't recommend it. ( )

Wow, a very good read for anyone who has dealt with, is currently dealing with mental illness or is working in that field. I'm definitely checking out her other book... ( )

Like many memoirs, this one captured my affection at the very end. The beginning chapters annoyed me. Ms. Vincent took the stance that all mental illness medication was terrible and over-prescribed and that doctors and health care workers really only cared about keeping people medicated. Her stance mellowed a bit as she experienced care in three different institutions and came to realize that healing or living with mental illness depends on the desire of the person who is ill. No one can fix someone else. She went from being a person who let others impose their ideas on her, to taking responsibility for her own mental health and doing the things she needs to do to live well with depression. ( )