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The Death of Small Creatures
In her lyrical memoir The Death of Small Creatures , Trisha Cull lays bare her struggles with bulimia, bipolar disorder and substance abuse. Interspersing snatches of conversations, letters, blog entries and clinical notes with intimate poetic narrative, Cull evokes an accessible experience of mental illness.
In The Death of Small Creatures , Cull strives to cope with her hopelessness. She finds comfort in the company of her two pet rabbits until one of them dies as a result of her lethargy. She numbs herself with alcohol. She validates her self-worth by seeking the love of men--any and all men--and three relationships significantly impact her her marriage to Leigh, a much older man; her unrequited love for Dr. P, her therapist; and her healthier relationship with Richard, an American she meets through her blog. She tries drugs--Neo Citran, Ativan, Wellbutrin, crack, crystal meth--and after two hospitalizations, she undergoes electroconvulsive therapy.
Haunting and expressive, this immersive memoir explores love in all its facets--needy, obsessive, healthy, self-directed--and plunges the reader headlong into the intense and immediate experience of mental illness.
In The Death of Small Creatures , Cull strives to cope with her hopelessness. She finds comfort in the company of her two pet rabbits until one of them dies as a result of her lethargy. She numbs herself with alcohol. She validates her self-worth by seeking the love of men--any and all men--and three relationships significantly impact her her marriage to Leigh, a much older man; her unrequited love for Dr. P, her therapist; and her healthier relationship with Richard, an American she meets through her blog. She tries drugs--Neo Citran, Ativan, Wellbutrin, crack, crystal meth--and after two hospitalizations, she undergoes electroconvulsive therapy.
Haunting and expressive, this immersive memoir explores love in all its facets--needy, obsessive, healthy, self-directed--and plunges the reader headlong into the intense and immediate experience of mental illness.
240 pages, Paperback
First published April 18, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 6, 2015
Oh my god. I don't even know where to begin. I want to stand on the top of a hill and proclaim my love for this book and for Trisha Cull. This memoir is everything; its required; its essential. I have never read something that has truly touched me so deeply, so profoundly before. This is one of the most beautiful pieces of anything that I've ever touched.
Cull's memoir is an unsheltered ride through her experiences with addiction, mental illness and self harm. For anyone who has ever struggled, known someone who has struggled, or who is generally alive at this moment in time needs read this book.
Admittedly, her recollections are often brutal and coated with vivid imagery. As Cull honestly, openly and unsparing releases her demons you are forced to confront your own and I found this to be very challenging. She's telling all of her secrets and mine come flooding out. But her strong, beautiful and lyrical writing pulls you through, cradles you along and wraps you in enduring catharsis. I was constantly torn between the desire to devour this book whole and running away and never looking back.
I cannot explain how much this has done for me, and what I know it will do for you. All of you.
You are so brave and beautiful and real, Trisha Cull. The world needs more advocates like you.
Cull's memoir is an unsheltered ride through her experiences with addiction, mental illness and self harm. For anyone who has ever struggled, known someone who has struggled, or who is generally alive at this moment in time needs read this book.
Admittedly, her recollections are often brutal and coated with vivid imagery. As Cull honestly, openly and unsparing releases her demons you are forced to confront your own and I found this to be very challenging. She's telling all of her secrets and mine come flooding out. But her strong, beautiful and lyrical writing pulls you through, cradles you along and wraps you in enduring catharsis. I was constantly torn between the desire to devour this book whole and running away and never looking back.
I cannot explain how much this has done for me, and what I know it will do for you. All of you.
You are so brave and beautiful and real, Trisha Cull. The world needs more advocates like you.
September 22, 2015
The Death of Small Creaturea has the kind of effect that burrows into you. You put it down and at the oddest times a line, a paragraph, will suddenly surface in your mind and it becomes more beautiful, more thought provoking and more immediate as time passes. It reminded me in the days that followed of a slender silver chain. It would draw me back into the prose, lead me to another small reminder of how close we all are to sharing her experiences.
It's a book that, for all is small size, looms large in your memory.
Patricia Cull shows us that the people who suffer from mental illness are among those who fight to appear most normal. Those fragile people who are pushed to the margins of society and who finally break, shatter and occasionally, win or lose, find a voice, a different voice.
Her love of her pets is shattering in its totality and reminds us that the true value of love can never be measured, it's only the experience of having it that matters. How ever short or long a time we have it, that love is the light that we all cling to. We are all lucky to have it. To recognize it. Patricia Cull reminded me that love is truly healing. That however hard life is, once you find something that matters, it is your rock. Even if it's a rabbit.
Most importantly, she shows that you are not your illness. That we are all individuals and have a story to tell. This book took true courage. It shines a light on mental illness and helps to show us that carrying around guilt and shame, refusing to talk about it, whether you are friend, family, or the person experiencing it, is our own failing as a society. To watch someone fighting to be strong, clinging to normalcy, who finally, almost irrevocably, slips into a form of madness and drug abuse...this is painful. And this is what she shows us.
It's not new to many of you out there. We who have watched a decline turn into a landslide. So many of you have seen someone you love slip away from you. Tried to hold them back from the precipice. Seen raw human experience, turn and eat them whole. This book is a beacon of hope. It's a light in the long dark tunnel of mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse.
This book, it's beautiful and even as I write this, I have tears in my eyes. Patricia Cull is a shout in the darkness. I hear her.
It's a book that, for all is small size, looms large in your memory.
Patricia Cull shows us that the people who suffer from mental illness are among those who fight to appear most normal. Those fragile people who are pushed to the margins of society and who finally break, shatter and occasionally, win or lose, find a voice, a different voice.
Her love of her pets is shattering in its totality and reminds us that the true value of love can never be measured, it's only the experience of having it that matters. How ever short or long a time we have it, that love is the light that we all cling to. We are all lucky to have it. To recognize it. Patricia Cull reminded me that love is truly healing. That however hard life is, once you find something that matters, it is your rock. Even if it's a rabbit.
Most importantly, she shows that you are not your illness. That we are all individuals and have a story to tell. This book took true courage. It shines a light on mental illness and helps to show us that carrying around guilt and shame, refusing to talk about it, whether you are friend, family, or the person experiencing it, is our own failing as a society. To watch someone fighting to be strong, clinging to normalcy, who finally, almost irrevocably, slips into a form of madness and drug abuse...this is painful. And this is what she shows us.
It's not new to many of you out there. We who have watched a decline turn into a landslide. So many of you have seen someone you love slip away from you. Tried to hold them back from the precipice. Seen raw human experience, turn and eat them whole. This book is a beacon of hope. It's a light in the long dark tunnel of mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse.
This book, it's beautiful and even as I write this, I have tears in my eyes. Patricia Cull is a shout in the darkness. I hear her.
June 3, 2015
This was one of, if not the, most disturbing books I've ever read. Trisha Cull combines beauty and ugliness with lyrical poetic language to startling effect. I found it incredibly sad because, as the reader, you have the impartiality to watch the narrator destroy herself while being able to do absolutely nothing about it. To me, it really captured the horror of watching someone you know/care about struggle with mental illness/addiction and just wishing so much that you could just get better FOR them, get sober FOR them, just somehow make them keep their job or want to live.
I found the parts with her husband Leigh to be especially tragic because as the impartial reader you can see how hard he is trying for her and how much he loves her while the narrator is just not healthy enough to act upon it or be what he needs her to be.
The whole aspect of the bunny room I found especially fascinating. I read Cull's story Pavilion in SubTerrain a long time ago and it left such an impression on me that even though I couldn't remember the title of the story or the author's full name, when I put the pieces together that this book was the same material and same writer, I freaked out and requested it from the library right away.
At one point, the author describes her bunny room as her "toxic sanctuary", and to me, that phrase sums up this book so well - that combination of beauty and ugliness, comfort and danger and sickness.
There was a terrible review of this in the Globe and Mail that in my opinion completely missed the point of the book. I really hope it doesn't prevent this book from reaching as many people as it should.
If you and anyone you know has ever dealt with mental illness or addiction (even if you haven't) I would recommend this book. The raw first-hand look into debilitating sickness is really unique. Chilling and unforgettable.
I found the parts with her husband Leigh to be especially tragic because as the impartial reader you can see how hard he is trying for her and how much he loves her while the narrator is just not healthy enough to act upon it or be what he needs her to be.
The whole aspect of the bunny room I found especially fascinating. I read Cull's story Pavilion in SubTerrain a long time ago and it left such an impression on me that even though I couldn't remember the title of the story or the author's full name, when I put the pieces together that this book was the same material and same writer, I freaked out and requested it from the library right away.
At one point, the author describes her bunny room as her "toxic sanctuary", and to me, that phrase sums up this book so well - that combination of beauty and ugliness, comfort and danger and sickness.
There was a terrible review of this in the Globe and Mail that in my opinion completely missed the point of the book. I really hope it doesn't prevent this book from reaching as many people as it should.
If you and anyone you know has ever dealt with mental illness or addiction (even if you haven't) I would recommend this book. The raw first-hand look into debilitating sickness is really unique. Chilling and unforgettable.
June 4, 2015
How can my words possible sum up all the feelings this book has lit up within me? Sometimes so familiar as to be frightening, sometimes so far away as to be made of stars that fascinate and draw one in - The Death of Small Creatures hurt me and healed me at once. Trisha must be one of the bravest and boldest among us, to live and write this book. How can I express my gratitude? My anxiety? My sense that I, too, can weather the dark times and emerge from a chrysalis into sunlight? That I, too, am worthy?
Thank you, Trisha, from the depths of my heart. Thank you for writing and fighting and living. You have given us all so much.
May you continue to bloom and blossom.
Thank you, Trisha, from the depths of my heart. Thank you for writing and fighting and living. You have given us all so much.
May you continue to bloom and blossom.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews