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One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival
by
81/99
Critics
36/99
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Scholars
70/99
Rating
92/99
Volume
25/99
Rating
48/99
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About This Book
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.
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Reviews
"The medium is the message: Suicide, as Antrim understands it, is a continuum of emotional pain ..."
"One Friday in April evokes, as vividly as any book since William Styron's Darkness Visible, the ongoing present tenseness — or present tension — of suicide, which Antrim describes as a condition in and of itself ..."
"The book is superb, rich with all the details and vocabularies that comprise any de-mystification of illness."
"[A] marvelous, heartbreaking, and beautifully revealing memoir ..."
"The light at the end of this painfully eloquent tunnel is the conclusion that no one should venture through the darkness alone."
"Unlike a flat line, Antrim's talent for storytelling is more similar to Russian nesting dolls: moments within moments that build upon each other as recollections and revelations ..."
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