Invisible Driving

by Alistair McHarg

Invisible Driving is a memoir of Manic Depression that takes readers inside the terrors, thrills, and triumphs of coming to terms with this debilitating and misunderstood mental illness. The manic narrator's voice vividly recreates the feelings and sensations of mania, offering an unprecedented look at this fascinating and bizarre state of being. While behavior and thought illuminate the condition of mania, it is the protagonist's language itself that most viscerally conveys what it feels like to be trapped inside a manic 'high.' The voice of the recovered narrator provides context, reliability, and credibility. Where the manic narrator is relentlessly entertaining and delusional, the recovered narrator is tough minded, concise, and determined to reveal the truth, no matter how painful. With a cold eye he examines the forces that shaped him in order to shed light on the psychological architecture driving the episode. The interplay between these two perspectives underscores the bipolar nature of Manic Depression; the greatest personal challenge is reconciling them. Ultimately, the narrator must confront his own worst nightmare and in doing so gain character, insight, and acceptance.

Genres: Memoir, Mental Health

Paperback

First published January 11, 2007

About the author

Alistair McHarg was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, moved immediately to Edinburgh, and three years later moved to Amsterdam. At 6 he settled in Philadelphia and for 16 years was confused by Quaker education; Germantown Friends School and Haverford College. A Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Louisville nudged him even closer to unemployability.

Convinced at an early age that fate had chosen writing as his calling, Alistair followed a characteristically slow and circuitous path. He has found work as deck hand on a Norwegian tramp freighter touring South America, Bureau of Land Management Emergency Fire Fighter in Alaska, guide at a Canadian wilderness survival camp, truck driver crisscrossing Colorado's continental divide, and inner city cabbie.

Alistair has been arranging words on paper for a living since 1983. He is the author of a bipolar memoir - INVISIBLE DRIVING, two satiric novels, MOONLIT TOURS and WASHED UP, and a poetry anthology entitled 50 POEMS. His website is www.alistairmcharg.com and he blogs at http://blog.alistairmcharg.com/

Reviews

[Alistair McHarg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review of Alistair McHarg's "Invisible Driving" based solely on its literary merits would yield effusive, well-deserved praise, for everything about it from a technical standpoint is flawless: compelling, fluid storytelling; wildly inventive use of language; beautifully crafted narrative. However, to do so would also be missing its most important, and I believe central, point: to communicate the visceral, raw power and energy of the human psyche, stretched and twisted to its most extreme.

To say that I was moved by Mr. McHarg's memoir of a particularly harrowing Manic-Depressive episode isn't quite right. Stirred, shaken, rattled to the teeth...would all be more accurate. Mr. McHarg's gift for poetry draws you straight into his head with utterly compelling emotional depth and breadth. The chapters alternate between the wildly careening "play-by-play" of his manic episode with narration that provides essential back story as well as a strong framework on which he develops the story of his eventual fall and subsequent recovery. This contrapuntal technique also provides a stark, sharp contrast between his mindset during the episode and the completeness with which his entire being is changed by its end. As the "manic" storyline gains momentum, the author's skill is such that his thought processes subtly begin to make a scary kind of sense, drawing you into his twisted logic even further and leaving you feeling almost like a co-conspirator.

This isn't a story intended to impress, surprise or shock, which for me was a significant part of its appeal. It is told with complete, unvarnished honesty and astonishing fearlessness. You love him, you hate him; you think he's insane, you think he's a genius. And through it all, you're in his grip and you don't want him to let go. It's a journey that's alternately brilliant, savagely funny, heartbreaking, terrifying and inspiring...straight into the maelstrom of madness and back out again, finally, into the light. This one will stay with you for a long time. Get it, fasten your seatbelts, and go "Invisible Driving" with Alistair McHarg. It is a trip you will never, ever forget.