One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival

by Donald Antrim

A searing and brave memoir that offers a new understanding of suicide as a distinct mental illness. As the sun lowered in the sky one Friday afternoon in April 2006, acclaimed author Donald Antrim found himself on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment building, afraid for his life. In this moving memoir, Antrim vividly recounts what led him to the roof and what happened after he came back down: two hospitalizations, weeks of fruitless clinical trials, the terror of submitting to ECT―and the saving call from David Foster Wallace that convinced him to try it―as well as years of fitful recovery and setback. Through a clear and haunting reckoning with the author’s own story,  One Friday in April  confronts the limits of our understanding of suicide. Donald Antrim’s personal insights reframe suicide―whether in thought or in action―as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person. A necessary companion to William Styron’s classic? Darkness Visible , this profound, insightful work sheds light on the tragedy and mystery of suicide, offering solace that may save lives.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Psychology, Mental Health, Biography Memoir, Biography, Mental Illness

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 2021

About the author

Donald Antrim is an American novelist. His first novel, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, was published in 1993. In 1999 The New Yorker named him as among the twenty best writers under the age of forty.

Antrim is a frequent contributor of fiction to The New Yorker and has written a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Verificationist and The Hundred Brothers, which was a finalist for the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award in fiction. He is also the author of The Afterlife, a 2006 memoir about his mother, Louanne Self. He has received grants and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Antrim is the brother of the artist Terry Leness and the son of Harry Antrim, a scholar of T. S. Eliot. Antrim has been associated with the writers David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, and the visual artist Christa Parravani.

He has taught prose fiction at the graduate school of New York University and was the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow for Fiction at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for spring 2009. Antrim teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[Miya (severe pain struggles, slower at the moment) · Rating 4 out of 5]

MANY TWs. Please fully read what this book is about and take into consideration your own health.

This is so raw and deep. I can't even put into words how I feel. It is short, but it will leave a lasting print on your heart and mind. Absolutely a book I will never forget. I am always glad to read books that bring uncomfortable conversations up. We need books like this. We need these stories to be told. Mental health is health. Now let me go cry in a corner for an hour.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

“As long as we see suicide as a rational act taken after rational deliberation, it will remain incomprehensible. Stigma, society’s unacknowledged violence toward the sick, will remain strong. But if we accept that the suicide is trying to survive, then we can begin to describe an illness. I believe that we must make this leap in our thinking. We must rule out myth and speculation. This letter, this report, this book, seeks a paradigm shift in our understanding of suicide in society. It finds neither will nor agency in suicide, only dying, and calls for a great commitment to the hospital, to our community and our health. What is the hospital, if not all of us? What is medicine, if not touch? Suicide must not be imagined as enigmatic; it isn’t poetry or philosophy. I have come to think of suicide as a natural history that may begin in trauma and abjection, or the withdrawal of touch, and that ends in death by one’s own hand. The purpose of suicide is death, not what we may think of as rage, revenge, or atonement for sin. To the extent that the suicide acts, it is but a falling away.”

A phenomenal and necessary book; this generation's Darkness Visible.

[Martha Southgate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll start out by saying that I’ve been acquainted with Donald for many years and knew about his journey through hell from friends in common. But knowing him doesn’t bias my response to the book. It’s masterful, an incredible rethinking of suicide and depression. It may be a paradigm shifter.

[Shannon Parkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

r As someone who went through similar experiences as Antrim, I would highly recommend this memoir. I attempted suicide by jumping in front of a Metro train in 2015. Doctors had to amputate portions of both of my feet. I resonate with Antrim’s words: “The paralysis of suicide is not apathy or stillness. We may feel encased, restrained somehow. Our bodies might break, or something outside us will break. What will break?”
Like Antrim, I spent four months in a mental health hospital. Like Antrim, I also recovered after many weeks of electroconvulsive therapy ECT, although in my case, I received the ECT after I had moved to one of several assisted living facilities where I lived for five years. Like Antrim, the ECT awakened my senses to experience the world. Like Antrim, before the ECT, I was told writing would help me, but I found it impossible. I am not an accomplished writer as is Donald Antrim, but after ECT, writing allowed me to share my experiences as I write articles, and prepare talks about mental health recovey that I give virtually.
Upon recovery, I resonate with Antrim’s words “I felt gratitude and something that seemed brand new in my life, a sense of calm, even happiness.”
I am grateful for Donald Antrim for sharing his experiences.

[Bonnie G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Bibliophobia last week, and in that book about the author's mental illness, including suicidal ideation, she referenced this short memoir about Donald Antrim's illness, which he calls "suicide", eschewing the label "depression." I was curious, and when I saw my library had the audiobook, which (I listen on 1.5x) was just over 2 hours long, I chose to listen. I am glad I did. The memoir is frank, hard to hear sometimes, but so insightful. The audio is read by the author. It is clear that he is speaking to others who might have the same illness, that he is telling them the truth in the hope that the illness will let them hear it and get help, and in the hope that our society will invest in providing help to people in need. This feels necessary.

As long as we see suicide as a rational act taken after rational deliberation, it will remain incomprehensible. Stigma, society's unacknowledged violence toward the sick, will remain strong. But if we accept that the suicide is trying to survive, then we can begin to describe an illness.

[Nicholas Montemarano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long been a fan of Antrim's short stories. As much as I admire THE EMERALD LIGHT IN THE AIR, this new memoir, ONE FRIDAY IN APRIL, is just as powerful, albeit in a different way and in a different genre—though addressing many of the same subjects, i.e. mental illness and suicide. Beyond Antrim's redefining suicide as a disease—rather than, say, an act or a choice (in other words, one can suffer from suicide without actually having committed suicide)—what makes this book stand out to me is how its form and style mirror its subject: Antrim's narrative mind jumps—often suddenly—from his hospitalization to his childhood to the "one Friday in April" when he almost fell to his death. Sometimes, these leaps happen within a paragraph, from sentence to sentence, as if the narrator is lost in space and time, as if everything is always happening at once—his parents' alcoholic, violent marriage, his breakdowns, his hospitalizations. An important book, and a work of art.

[Nona · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Can we say whether our brains control our bodies, or whether our bodies inform our brains? Does my heart pound in anxiety, or am I anxious because my heart is pounding?” Author Donald Antrim brings us along on his complicated and difficult journey through his illness, suicide. He was supported and received the treatments he needed as he begged for help with his symptoms, aware that he was not well. His memoir of his closeness to suicide and the importance of empathy and the connection we have with one another from birth throughout our lives is unsettling, yet hopeful and thought-provoking.

[Mildly Annoyed Rabbit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heard about the book from a New York Times review, which brought me to a New Yorker article written by the author. His writing is so compelling, I bought the book. Read it through in one sitting. The author is a tremendous writer and has some thoughtful insights into his disease and the the challenges of living in the modern world and dealing with loneliness and isolation.

[Pj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply cannot wait for this book. It’s getting my five-star rating now, despite its October publication date. For anyone else on tetherhooks over this book, I’d suggest reading or re-reading Antrim’s New Yorker piece, Everywhere and Nowhere: A Journey Through Suicide. It blew me away and left me hoping to read much more of his story. Fortunately, it’s almost here.


currently on page 22

What a strong beginning. Antrim is hanging from his rooftop and his neighbors seem not to notice. For him, that was definitely best. No complaints meant no rumors, lawsuits, etc. . Obscurity during his crisis preserved his chance for reentry into mainstream life, however long his recovery would last. And, NIMBY drama ripe for a more salacious memoirist wasn’t missed by Antrim. As he recalled his hours in limbo between life and death, he laid bare our alienating domestic spaces and underscored a major, yet overlooked fact about suicide: The risk and burden of it almost always falls on the suicidal person. Able-normative people love to complain about how much “trouble” suicidal people create. But, suicidal people usually experience what Antrim did - life-endangering levels of isolation. Suicide wouldn’t be among the top 10 causes of death in the United States, if suicidal people had any measurable impact on *any* social unit.

I also was impressed, yet disheartened, by Antrim’s habit of blaming himself for interpersonal problems he probably wasn’t responsible for. He was bereaved, had excelled in an emotionally-taxing career (The Afterlife was nominated for a National Book Critic’s Circle Award), and had spared himself no “treatment”-related risk (including psychiatric drugs, which increase suicidal feelings in many people, especially after long-term use). Having met society’s standards for “successful coping” with trauma, hadn’t he “earned” compassion, patience, and respect - basic care we ALL should receive, no matter what? That question isn’t posed, let alone answered by Antrim. His strength is subtlety and, as his story reveals, he’s ethical to a fault. Even his harshest criticisms, many directed at society as a whole, land very, very gently. This story is driven by Antrim’s self-discipline and empathy. As a reader, I couldn’t help but admire it. And, as a “mentally ill” person, it’s frustrating as hell. To see Antrim give so much, after years have passed, to people who hadn’t cared at all about him? Maddening!

currently on page 32

The evacuation of Antrim from his roof to his hospital bed was deeply absorbing and suspenseful. Flashbacks to his childhood, all seamlessly organized and paced, emerge at a faster clip here. One word came to mind as I read about his early life: cowed. His parents coveted violence and chaos every moment of every day, resulting in stress-related physical illnesses which forced Antrim out of safer environments, such as K-12 school. But, physical proximity to his abusive parents wasn’t his primary source of danger. He was, in my view, FAR more terrorized by his parents’ psychological grip on him. Those degenerates actually succeeded in making Antrim fear our justice system more than them. Immobilized by his misplaced fear, he fully digested his parents’ whacked-out delusions: Antrim and his sister are “playing” as his parents fight, not fleeing; Publishing a book about his hellish upbringing is “betrayal”, not catharsis, honesty, or an artifact of his immense talent. Such extreme disadvantage, sustained early in life and set upon him by a small number of clearly identifiable people, shouldn’t have been hard for “professionals” to address. But, psychiatry, as Antrim would eventually realize, has mastered the scam of providing “help” no one needs, for “defects” which do not exist.

Society’s only PC rationale for suicide - inadequate access to psychiatry - can’t be used as a scapegoat for Antrim’s suicide attempt. He invested himself, financially and personally, in psychiatry’s “gold standard” of care - deinstitutionalized, urban, uptown, private, “bio-psycho-social” (anyone who isn’t a patient or a policy wonk may have to Google that phrase). To overstate how much he lost from his investment is, frankly, impossible. He could have disclosed anything about it. A “mentally ill” man, many years recovered, who could document his loss, if necessary, would be allowed his candor. For once, perfect “civility” wouldn’t be demanded of him before he could speak. Antrim’s biggest losses were irreplaceable ones: privacy, trust, and time. Moments of reflection on losses so large usually provoke moments of unbridled recrimination. Some people can handle losing possessions; Most can’t handle a loss of integrity or potential.

[Susan K Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be brief. I think it was helpful to me to have read all of Antrim's novels before reading this wrenching memoir of his period of near-suicide. Perhaps that is because his novels showed me how brilliant he is, and then to learn how often he was so close to ending it all. Mental illness can be so unsettling when you find out it is part of the life of someone you know or think you know because you're a fan of their public (writing) self. The physically painful part of it all was new to me.

Antrim's position is that suicide and its ideation needs to be thought of and treated differently, as a mental illness, not as a carefully thought-out decision. I don't want to shortchange his thesis, nor his beautifully written story, so I'll stop here and strongly urge anyone with any interest in the mind and psychology to read the book yourself.

[MountainAshleah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My goodness, this memoir. It started out as a slow burn but then became a bonfire of self admission, sharing, and bravery. Carrying in my head the suicides of my father and close friend, I've read extensively, the usual collection, including most works by DFW, who makes a brief appearance and would tragicallyone day take his own life. I thought this menoir might be just another to add to my ever growing dark but comforting collection. It's not. This memoir is not for everyone, but for those of us who know, it will resonate. I can't remember how this memoir wound up on my audio book list, but it did, and I'm grateful to the author and the publishers who brought it to life.

[Jojo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I’m happy with relived to read that Donald’s life has improved, I did feel like there was a lot missing in his story. I was expecting to learn more about past experiences that may have led him to the mental state he was in but instead found a lot of repetition in the ward he was in. The psychology was not mentioned very much and I wasn’t drawn in as much as I hoped I would be.
With that being said, it was an alright story that shows you a bit of life struggle with depression, but I probably wouldn’t read it again.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is always a hard topic to think or talk about, but it's so necessary in order to remove stigma and misconceptions about mental illness, depression, psychosis, suicide, etc.

The author's story gives a brief account of his thought processes when he was unwell and his experience with psychiatric hospitals and therapists.

An interesting part of the story that stuck out to me is when author David Foster Wallace (who wrote Infinite Jest) heard about Donald Antrim's struggles in the hospital. He called Donald, convincing him to let the doctors proceed with electroconvulsive therapy. David truly believed the therapy cured his illness and urged Donald to give it a try because of that. While that therapy may have helped to prolong David Foster Wallace's life, he unfortunately died by suicide in 2008.

I think the biggest takeaway is that mental illness and suicide are not one-size-fits-all issues. Even in today's age, there's still a lot of misconception. It's not selfish, cowardly, poetic, philosophical, or romantic. It just is...and those who are struggling are human too and DO want to get better.

Suffice to say, we still have a long way to go in psychology and neurology. However, I think we're moving in the right direction (even by discussing mental health in general).

[Leslie Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely and topical call to action, a plea, about the changing nature of suicide, told from someone who has been 'on the brink' and back, ONE FRIDAY IN APRIL is a tender, emotional, raw, exploration of what the author posits a 'social problem.'

I cannot love this book any more. ONE FRIDAY IN APRIL (October 12, 2021, from W.W. Norton & Co.) is profound, thought-provoking, and infused with clear-eyed examination of one's life, but the bigger issue at hand: the human condition, sigma.

Through a raw and harrowing--yet beautiful--account of the author's suicide attempt, we are lead right onto the fire escape where he vacillated on the decision to end his life. For a brief, but complex time, we're co-pilots with Antrim as he allows us into his suicidal state of mind, the downward spiral, the dark thoughts, his psychiatric hospitalization and recovery, the gorgeous reinvention of suicide.

I was struck and in awe with the way Donald Antrim reframes the stigma of suicide, how it's not merely the result of a 'depression,' which he posits is not 'near enough' but that suicide, the act of even thinking about suicide is even bigger still and stems from trauma. This section, early in the book, resonated:

"I see it [suicide] as a long illness, an illness with origins in trauma and isolation, in deprivation of touch, in violence and neglect, in the loss of home and belonging [...] it's etiology, it's beginning, whether early in life, or later in life, in the family or beyond, is social in nature. I see suicide as a social disease. I will refer to suicide, not depression."

This floored me. It made sense. My maternal family is rife with mental illness, this speaks to many of origins presented, at least in my family.

ONE FRIDAY IN APRIL is unsentimental but gorgeously rendered. I found it inspiring and jarring, honest and authentic. It's about being misunderstood, but it's also life-affirming and speaks to the human condition in a way I've yet to see. This book is not long, but it's complex and multilayered, delving into Antrim's past, his writing life, along with touches of his future. I felt emotionally wrung-out as a I read, but the book ends on a hopeful note.

If you or a loved one is struggling with your mental health, help is available. A book should not take the place of qualified medical care; please, if you need assistance, seek the nearest emergency room. You don't have to fight alone.

I was reminded, in part, of the work of Catherine Cho (INFERNO) meets Jill Bialosky's ASYLUM with a touch of THE NINTH HOUR (Alice McDermott), Leesa Cross-Smith's THIS CLOSE TO OKAY, Kathryn Craft's THE FAR END OF HAPPY and Elizabeth Brundage's THE VANISHING POINT.

For all my reviews, including author interviews, please visit: www.leslielindsay.com|Always with a Book.

Special thanks to Norton Publishing for this review copy. All thoughts are my own.

[Mitch Loflin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does for suicide a lot of the things I loved that Anne Boyer's The Undying did for cancer. A really effective mix of vulnerably autobiographical and analytical/reasoned.

[Rhonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read anything that has painted such a vivid picture of suicide. My heart ached for what the author endured but am glad he is currently living his best life. While the book doesn't flow in a traditional way, it made sense. I am so glad I won this book in a good reads drawing and am now able to share with others who may be helped by it.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Antrim posits that suicide may not be rash, an impulse of the moment, but the result of alienation. A failed struggle to live integrated with others. His life demonstrates both massive personal violations pushing him out to the edges of society, as well as the paths taken to find his way back. A somewhat bittersweet happy ending. Great book.

[Azarin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. The sober tone of the writing intensified the horror of the narration. An eye opening insight into suicide and depression.

[Dora Plummer magovern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Everyone should have to read this book.

[Sarah Tittle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in one sitting and recommend that. It is a very powerful and beautifully written meditation on the pain of suicidal thoughts, and how those thoughts affected Antrim physically. It's also a sort of good news report not the state of psychiatric hospitals and ECT, both of which served Antrim well. My heart goes out to him and all who suffer this way.

[Ann Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Antrim breaks all the rules in this just-published memoir, achieving a result that is unique and profoundly moving, fascinating, and informative.

The story that holds it all together issues from an addled mind where reality is mixed with passion, memory, and illness. Of the classic storylines, this is a man takes a journey, or perhaps a man climbs out of a hole.

The first pages of the book find the author barely averting suicide while hanging from a fire escape on a chilly evening and the last pages find him sitting on a couch listening to his wife play the piano. Chronologically, the story begins with his birth and ends in the present day. How can a writer convey an entire life (so far) in 133 pages? Read and see. The poet Patrick Lane achieves a similar feat in his memoir, What the Stones Remember.

The book also recalls the “magical thinking” experienced by Joan Didion in her eponymous book, The Year of Magical Thinking. Only Antrim says his untethered and chaotic patterns of thought and action have lasted all his life. His suffering takes place in a subjective infinity, Hell, an eternal state of almost-death.

A cloud of confusion and pain lies over the book. If you try to pierce it, you’ll come up with another cloud, though in the end, Antrim gives the reader some ideas and a basket of compassion to hang onto.

The point of the story is Antrim’s opinion that our understanding of suicide is all wrong.  He states his oppositional view in the opening aphorism:  “Ask not what disease the person has, but rather, what person the disease has. (Sir William Osler)” The widow writhing in the agony of her loss need not ask “Why did he leave me?” Her attempt to make sense of it is speculation fed by myth. There was no choice involved in leaving her. Antrim writes, “As long as we see suicide as a rational act taken after rational deliberation, it will remain incomprehensible.”

Antrim quotes another memoir, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, in which William Styron “argues that the word ‘depression’ is inadequate to describe this illness…Suicide, in [Antrim’s] experience, is not that.”  He repeats that it is not “an act or a choice, a decision or a wish.”

It is an illness which began long before he was hanging from a fire escape. It is a “social disease” caused by some kind of deprivation—he ruminates whether his case could have been caused by lack of touch in infancy. He makes the reasonable and logical argument that suicides don’t want to die. They are taken from us by illness, and that illness is not depression but suicide itself.

Antrim has found relief through numerous Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) treatments. The book is not a treatise praising ECT, but a plea to readers to realize that the people under treatment for suicidal ideation or suicide attempts, and the people already taken from us by suicide, are not “wild-eyed types,” but Everyman. Everywoman.

In its analysis and pleas for mercy, the book is a powerful statement supported by the author’s personal story and the stories of others who did not survive, such as David Foster Wallace.

Perhaps the greatest miracle of this memoir is the artistry of Antrim’s writing. The reader is in today, then yesterday, then the day before yesterday, then tomorrow, without the slightest hitch. Oh, it looks easy, but anyone who has tried it can tell you it isn’t.

Using his authorial legerdemain, he changes voice with stunning effect.  Read this:

“…We went to a room down the hall. It was an operating room—lots of medical equipment, but also computers and electronics.

You lie in your gown and your socks on the table. You’re looking up at the white ceiling…”

Can you feel the stunning change from third person to second? Suddenly it’s not computers and electronics…it’s YOU lying there. This brilliant change of voice shocked and unsettled this reader.

In the last few lines, Antrim writes that while sitting on the couch listening to his wife play the piano, he is writing a letter to “you.” What the reader thought was a memoir written for the general public has been all along an intimate letter, a confession and explanation, a thing that is adamantly real and present, important to “you.”

It’s hard to stop writing about or quoting this book. This reader is left with gratitude that Antrim has not let his suicidal suffering slip into the past but has brought it to us in present detail, so we can understand and perhaps better help those people who are living in its eternal hell.

The message of the book is not that we should pity what Antrim went through, but what we all are going to do about it. He does us the grace of bringing us his call to arms through a page-turning, engrossing, tale of life and death, or death and life.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very glad I read this. I value it not only for its insights into the mental illness of suicide, such as this:

The terms that we use to describe illness can either inform our impede our understanding. We can speak and write in language that expresses tactility and touch, not theory and abstraction. We can figure forth meaning in appearances, or we can question appearances. To say, for instance, that suicides are naturally impulsive people is to miss the hours, months, and years of anxiety and physical deterioration, the fear and the seeming resignation with which we go to our deaths. Or we might think the catatonic torpid, and not understand the anguish, the feeling of the body somehow vibrating, the paralysis. The man on the bridge may spend hours perched at the railing, peering down, afraid to look. The woman in the waves does not splash her way into the sea, but most likely walks slowly, until she is submerged. We think of gun suicides as violent, rather than merciful. Better to say that suicides are sick and at risk, rather than needy, disturbed, or crazy. Suicide is not a storm or a conflagration, a deluge or an inferno. (107)

but for its insights into our ideas about illness in general:

Each era sees the world in terms of its own technologies. Friends and lovers are on the same frequency, accident victims go into shock, the successful enjoy power and frustration might cause you to blow a fuse. Our current imagery for suicides is not possible with without computers and an electrical grid. We imagine our brains and bodies as wired, and when we are tired we might say that we are off-line, or powered down, or that we need a reboot. Are we on the same wavelength? Freud, who posits an unruly id, a willful ego, and a controlling super ego as a system, and who writes about pressures, drives, and releases, invokes the coal furnaces, steam engines, and valves and stoppers of the Industrial Revolution. Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century itinerant Swiss doctor who discovered and named miners' disease, black lung, writes about illness in alchemical terms. Paracelsus might speak of the moon and the stars, and then prescribe mineral and vegetable tinctures and compounds. We still use pharmaceutical compounds, which we call psychiatric medications. Hippocrates, writing around 450-400 BC, centuries before dissection and the study of anatomy and pathology became medical practice, describes delirium and convulsions in naturalistic terms. About epilepsy, the popularly taken as a form of divine possession, he writes, "This so-called 'sacred disease,' is due to the same causes as all other diseases, to the things we see come and go, the cold and the sun too, the changing and inconstant winds." Hippocrates looks to nature, to the body, to what we can see, hear, touch, and feel, the things in the world that we can correctly describe. (108)

I'm not completely persuaded by those paragraphs; I wish he had found more, better examples for how we use electronic equipment as metaphors for our states and relationships; shock has been documented with its current medical meaning since 1804, and power has been the English term for something the successful enjoy since the dawn of the fourteenth century. But I am still intrigued at where it points and want to think about it further.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not one for the downhearted; it's quite depressing and the uplift at the end is more of a "well, maybe, for now." Antrim, a fairly successful writer, begins by describing in detail a night in 2006 spent on the roof of his apartment building, hanging from the fire escape, trying to decide whether or not to let go. This incident leads to a series of hospitalizations, therapy, clinical trials, and, after initial resistance, a course of ECT ("shock treatment"). Ironically, it was a phone call from the celebrated David Foster Wallace--an author that Antrim admired but with whom he had only slight acquaintance--that persuaded him to give ECT a go. Wallace himself committed suicide in 2008. Antrim details his "recovery" (or "recoveries"), each inevitably followed by another setback. Resisting the diagnosis of "depression," he proposes that the inclination towards suicide is a condition in itself, perhaps kicked off by childhood experiences but not subject to the usual treatments for depression. Antrim's parents were both alcoholic, and both were also abusers; his beloved mother took her rage at her husband out on her son. At the time of his suicide attempt, lost in grief but with mixed feelings about her death, he was working on a a memoir of his mother. It's no surprise that Antrim's relationships with women were, for the most part, unsuccessful. Although he appears to be in a good relationship at the memoir's end, one can't help but wonder for how long.

Antrim's memoir is an honest one, holding nothing back. 'One Friday in April' has been well received and compared to William Styron's 'Darkness Visible.' It's a difficult book to say one "enjoyed" reading, but Antrim's insights were illuminating.

[Jeannine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gut punch of a memoir, but it is so important and should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand mental illness and suicide. A transformational account of Antrim’s descent into psychosis, his ongoing struggles with anxiety and depression, his repeated hospitalizations, and the various medication and electroshock treatments he underwent to get to a more stabilized existence. Antrim provides the gritty details of his illness and various treatments, but he also provides an insightful overview of suicide and mental illness, asking the reader to reconsider their biases of this phenomenon. He prods us to rethink the mysteries and stigma surrounding suicide and mental illness and to consider our society’s culpability in aiding and abetting it. A very compelling account that provides more questions than answers, but leaves you with a deeper understanding of how all-consuming mental illness and the desire to end it all can be. An important book that would make an interesting pairing with Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through? in a book discussion.

[Andrea Trenary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Goodreads win and a hard pass.

It takes a lot for me to hate a book. But this one managed it. I made it 50 pages in before DNF’ing and even that was a struggle. I wanted to DNF on page two from something he’d said that was super manipulative towards his girlfriend. He told me no less than six times in the first few pages what he was wearing.
Super narcissistic.
This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It is a book to be thrown with great force.

[Justin M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly raw book. This humanized one person’s journey with mental health and suicide and expanded my perception of psychology in a way that textbooks could not. The stream of consciousness writing style took a bit to get used to, especially since it jumped around in time, but I saw it as more mirroring the author’s state of mind than poor pacing. Would say that you should be in a steady state of mind before opening the book.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cried & cried while reading this. It's a powerful glimpse into one person's singular mental health journey, the disease. I'm exhausted now that I've finished but in a refreshing way.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating thoughts on recasting suicide as disease; but the entire book is structured like a stream of consciousness letter from that unorganized family member.

[Mrs. Danvers · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and thoughtful piece on the definition of suicide and its causes, and the ways that are most helpful to think about the person contemplating it.

[Kanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

CW // & TW //: please read the title of the book clearly, and be mindful to take care of yourself.

Ask not what disease the person has, but rather, what person the disease has.
~ Sir William Osler.

Oh dear, this is such a brilliant description and heartfelt perspective of that 'burning fire' inside ["We may feel as if we are burning, as if our cells have caught fire."]. It is brilliant because the feelings and thoughts are narrated unfiltered and so well, and the reader is provided with such deep insight into understanding the struggle, the turmoil and the pain a person goes through when they are suicidal.

"Grief, sadness, and despair are common enough experiences for most of us; they are universal states of being, painful yet transformative. But suicide, an illness with strong common symptomologies from patient to patient around the world, cannot adequately be explained in terms of grief, sadness, or despair."

Suicide must not be imagined as enigmatic; it isn’t poetry or philosophy.

One Friday in April is scary, chilling, intimate, raw, thought-provoking and profound.

"Soldiers in battle have no safety from war, only weaponry, their training, and their trust in each other".

Donald Antrim writes to and for us from his heart. He shares intimate and intricate details of this journey, pours his heart out to provide us a perspective of this disease process and the terrible times and dilemmas a person goes through.

"Suicide is a natural history, a disease process, not an act or a choice, a decision or a wish.
I see it as a long illness, an illness with origins in trauma and isolation, in deprivation of touch, in violence and neglect, in the loss of home and belonging. It is a disease of the body and the brain, if you make that distinction, but its etiology, its beginning, whether in early or later life, in the family or beyond, is social in nature. I see suicide as a social disease. I will refer to suicide, not depression".

"Suicide did not seem like a choice to me, but an eternal state, like the eternity of death."

"Ambivalence, our ability to hold many ideas and beliefs at once, is absent in the psychosis."

By explaining and recounting about his painful and traumatic past experiences and life events, Donald Antrim 'connects the dots' and helps us get a clear understanding of how the past led to the present - the reasons and the source for the suicidal thoughts.

"We don’t understand, as children, that our loneliness and lack of care will become a fate—a loneliness that we will feel all our lives".

"Children bullied at school may find asylum at home, but for children abused in the home, there is no asylum."

This thought may sound weird, but it clearly feels like we, human beings, need to be trained on parenting skills before we become parents. Parenting and taking care of children is not totally a on-the-job learning. Many parents, mostly unknowingly, mess up a child's life and future.

What is suicide?
Why do we have it?
Why would any person do it?
How did we miss the cues?
Is it my fault that I did not do enough?
Was the pain so unbearable?
Has they become so upset with life, and finally gave up in despair?
Is it because of family genetics?

We may never have a perfect answer to these questions. But by understanding and building perspectives, we can do more and better - be there to soothe, love unconditionally and without any judgement, give a hug, give quality time and focus and get rid of at least some loneliness.

There will be many unanswered questions, and the purpose of this memoir does not seem to be about resolving or to find a solution. We cannot get 'rid' of this disease and will have to continue living alongside it, hence the learning, the understanding and the perspective will be of immense help, opens up our minds and can be a potential lifesaver.

This book is invaluable and may be a lifesaver. It could be the life of a loved one, a family member, a friend, a stranger or even yours.

==========

Depression, hysteria, melancholia, nervousness, neurosis, neurasthenia, madness, lunacy, insanity, delirium, derangement, demonic possession, black humors, black bile, the blues, the blue devil, a brown study, a broken heart, a funk, a storm, a brainstorm, the abyss, an inferno, an apocalypse, Hell, the Void, anxiety, a lack of affect, panic, loneliness, bad wiring, irritability, hostility, unipolar disorder, bipolar disorder, mixed depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit disorder, borderline personality disorder, bulimia, anorexia, rumination, grief, mourning, malingering, laziness, sadness, despondency, dysfunction, dysthymia, detachment, disassociation, dementia praecox, neuralgia, oversensitivity, hypersensitivity, idiocy, unreasonableness, an unsound mind, cowardice, obstinacy, obduracy, intransigence, instability, apathy, lethargy, ennui, recalcitrance, battle fatigue, shell shock, self-pity, self-indulgence, weakness, withdrawal, delusion, dissatisfaction, negativity, a turn in the barrel, a break in a life narrative, bad thoughts, bad feelings, falling apart, falling to pieces, wigging out, freaking out, a chemical imbalance, a heavy heart, self-destructiveness, excitation, exhaustion, thoughts of hurting oneself or others, the thousand-yard stare, rage, misery, gloom, desolation, wretchedness, hopelessness, unworthiness, mania, morbidity, genius, terror, dread, a descent, a fall, suicidality, suicidal ideation, aggression, regression, deregulation, decompensation, deadness, drama, agony, angst, breakdown, a disease of the mind, a disorder, heartbreak, rough sailing, crackup, catatonia, agitation, losing one’s mind, losing one’s way, losing heart, wasting away, a crisis, a struggle, a trial, existential despair, a philosophical problem, a decision taken after long thought, shame, shyness, ranting and raving, the furies, an old friend, a constant companion, a punishment, a tragedy, a curse, a crime against nature, a crime against God, a sin, a mystery, an enigma, and, of course, psychosis—suicide, in the past and in our own time, has been called, and attributed to, many things.

==========
"This letter, this report, this book, seeks a paradigm shift in our understanding of suicide in society". A must-read.

Thank you, Donald Antrim!