All Down Darkness Wide

"a rapturous account of his years with a boyfriend who suffered from suicidal depression ..."

"Synge, Hewitt would not seem at first glance to be someone in peril...But his thoughtful and often exquisitely written memoir is both a gay coming-of-age and an exploration of the mental health crises affecting the LGBTQ community...More specifically, it is the story of his long-term partner Elias's suicidal depression, of the toll this illness took on Hewitt, and of the revelations that it spurred...The dramas in this book, like the sentences, are less pyrotechnic than those of Asturias or Kochai, but they lack neither energy nor significance...The memoir at its core is about Hewitt's relationship with Elias, starting with their meeting in Colombia, where both men are traveling alone...Elias is Swedish, and once Hewitt returns to the United Kingdom, their relationship seems destined to be long-distance, until they move in together: first in Liverpool, where Hewitt pursues a graduate degree, and subsequently in Gothenburg...Though a study of despair, the memoir is not despairing: through their poetry, Hopkins and Boye offer inspiration to Hewitt, also a poet...Considering queer lives, 'both of them hoped—one with certainty, one with longing—that there would be a place for those people, a friend to watch them, a room with their name above the lintel.'"

"This is not a break-up memoir, however...This intensely original memoir's real subject is what appears to Hewitt, in the aftermath of these relationships, as a thread that connects these men to each other, and to himself—'a sort of curse, a brokenness in them, in us' ..."

"Laurel Prize winner Hewitt mines the capriciousness of love and pain in this poignant reflection on living with a clinically depressed partner...Unable to find steady work after graduating Cambridge, Hewitt set off on a backpacking trip through South America, where he met Elias...The two quickly fell in love and Elias moved back to Liverpool with Hewitt, despite only knowing him for a short time...However, when the pair moved to Elias's native Sweden, a crisis unfolded as the Elias Hewitt knew, typically easygoing and boisterous, was ripped away by a struggle with depression that led to a suicide attempt...Amid the devastation—which crescendos at their relationship's end—Hewitt crafts a moving story of salvation, as he charts his path out of darkness and into self-acceptance...It's an exquisite vision of queer heartbreak and liberation."

"It is refreshing to be presented with a book that explores heartbreak and meditates on the meaning of relationships with such emotional openness and vulnerability from a male perspective ..."

"does not offer glib consolations and is all the more powerful and affecting for that."