Overview

The Glass Castle meets An Unquiet Mind in a mesmerizing, loving memoir about growing up in a family plagued by bipolar disorder.
Four out of the five people in poet David Lovelaceas immediate family have experienced bipolar disorderaincluding David himself. His relationship with the disease began with his artist motheras severe depressions during his boyhood in the 1960s and continued through decades of his preacher fatheras increasingly eccentric behavior. The familyas battle with the disorder reached its apex in 1986, the year that his father, his brother, and David himself were all committed in quick succession. Only his sister has escaped unscathed.
Scattershot is Lovelaceas poignant, humorous, and vivid account of the diseaseas effects on his family, and his gripping exploits as he spent his life running fromaand finally learning to embraceathe madness imprinted on his genes. Scattershot explores the powerful connections between fundamentalist religious belief and mental illness, illuminated by Davidas strange and fantastic childhood in church camps and parish residences.
A coming-of-age story punctuated by a series of truly harrowing experiences, this devastating and empathetic portrait of the Lovelace family strips away the shame associated with bipolar disorder and celebrates the profound creative gifts that come with it.

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9780525950783

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Reviews

As a twenty-something in the 1980s, Lovelace discovered that he had bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic-depression), a shattering mental illness shared by both his parents and, they would find later, his younger brother. Growing up, his parents went largely undiagnosedahis motheras initial breakdown was in 1949, the days when apsychiatrists diagnosed almost all delusional illness as schizophrenia, a and the only treatment was electroshock. Members of his family spent years in deep, undiagnosed suffering, largely from depression (aDenial wasnat difficult, not yet. No one in my family had experienced maniaa), and Lovelace spent years running from his illness through Mexico, South America and later to New York, accompanied by drugs and alcohol: aI've denied my own illness and I've loved it almost to death.a Lovelace's poetic prose is both matter-of-fact and haunted, capturing the unpredictable rhythms of mental illness: aAlone in the bathroom I made a smile in the mirror and it strangled my eyes.a Readers will get a real sense of the interior world of a single patient, and a family, on the verge of a mental breakdown.<br> a Publisheras Weekly starred review

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