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Full Blown: Me and My Bipolar Family
David Lovelace, along with his brother and both his parents, is bipolar. This is his extraordinary and vivid memoir of life within his memorable, maddening, loving and unique family.
Full Blown is Lovelace's poignant, humorous, and vivid account of growing up and coming to terms with the highs and lows of manic depression.
David's father was a Princeton-trained theology professor deemed too eccentric for the ministry and his mother battled depression all her life. Manic episodes were part of family life - they called them the 'whim-whams'. David was a teenager when his first serious depression hit, and at college when he first became manic. He ran to escape it – to Mexico, South America and then New York, to drugs and alcohol – before he realised the futility of running.
A father himself, a son and a brother, David's matter-of-fact approach to growing up surrounded by the unique creativity often sparked by manic depression is compelling. In the vein of Stuart, A Life Backwards and Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors , David’s poetic ability to detail the unique highs and harrowing lows makes a remarkable and gripping read.
Full Blown is Lovelace's poignant, humorous, and vivid account of growing up and coming to terms with the highs and lows of manic depression.
David's father was a Princeton-trained theology professor deemed too eccentric for the ministry and his mother battled depression all her life. Manic episodes were part of family life - they called them the 'whim-whams'. David was a teenager when his first serious depression hit, and at college when he first became manic. He ran to escape it – to Mexico, South America and then New York, to drugs and alcohol – before he realised the futility of running.
A father himself, a son and a brother, David's matter-of-fact approach to growing up surrounded by the unique creativity often sparked by manic depression is compelling. In the vein of Stuart, A Life Backwards and Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors , David’s poetic ability to detail the unique highs and harrowing lows makes a remarkable and gripping read.
316 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 30, 2010
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38 people want to read
About the author
David Lovelace
6 books7 followersDavid Lovelace is a writer, carpenter, and former owner of the Montague Bookmill near Amherst, Massachusetts. His memoir, SCATTERSHOT was published by Dutton Books in 2008 and is Lovelace's poignant and humorous account of bipolar disorder's effects on his family. Lovelace's poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as the Paterson Review's Allen Ginsberg Award. Lovelace lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and children."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 23, 2017
Honest and insightful account of growing up with bipolar - doesn't glamorise or sugar-coat his history, shining light on something that a lot of people are afraid to discuss or don't fully understand. All told with an underlying wit that warmed me to him. Lovelace doesn't shy away from telling stories about his past which must be hard to recount. I also learnt a lot about a mental illness which I didn't really know about before.
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October 2, 2016A insightful perspective of a family suffering with mental illness. I loved how well it illustrates the fact that mental diseases are just as serious as any other.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews