Synopses & Reviews
In the fall of 1999, twenty-three-year-old Lizzie Simon hit the road on a journey that took her across the United States. Her inspired interviews with other young men and women suffering from manic depression comprise the heart and soul of this remarkable memoir. Detour sheds light into the controversial and provocative world of mental illness today through the eyes of a young survivor. With wit, fury, and deep compassion, Lizzie reveals what she discovered on her cross-country odyssey. Along the way, she shares personal revelations about love (a hot affair with a brilliant fellow manic depressive), and politics (a skewering of the myths surrounding bipolar disorder, which afflicts millions of Americans annually), and offers insight and hope into the future of mental health. Detour is a search for identity, self-worth, and love. It's a liberating confessional, a compulsively readable memoir as group-therapy session interweaving the stories of other bipolar men and women. Poignant, passionate, at times surreal, Detour is informed by a fierce, probing intelligence. This extraordinary book heralds the arrival of one of today's most gifted and unique young authors.
Review
The Village Voice [U]tterly unselfconscious, funny, [and] harrowing.
Review
Peter D. Kramer author of Listening to Prozac Detour does for bipolar disorder what Prozac Nation did for depression -- scopes it out from the viewpoint of someone who is young, hip, and vulnerable.
Review
John Berendt author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Lizzie Simon's ingenious inquiry into the nature and treatment of manic depression -- her own as well as others' -- is a spellbinding revelation.
Synopsis
By all appearances, Lizzie Simon was perfect. She had an Ivy League education, lots of friends, a loving family, and a dazzling career as a theater producer by the age of twenty-three. But that wasn't enough: Lizzie still felt alone in the world, and largely misunderstood. Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, she longed to meet others like herself; she wanted to hear the experiences of those who managed to move past their manic-depression and lead normal lives. So Lizzie hits the road, hoping to find "a herd of her own." Along the way she finds romance and madness, survivors and sufferers, and, somewhere between the lanes, herself. Part road trip, part love story, Detour is a fast-paced, enduring memoir that demystifies mental illness while it embraces the universally human struggle to become whole.
Synopsis
By all appearances, Lizzie Simon was perfect. She had an Ivy League education, lots of friends, a loving family, and a dazzling career as a theater producer by the age of twenty-three. But that wasn't enough: Lizzie still felt alone in the world, and largely misunderstood. Having been diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a teenager, she longed to meet others like herself; she wanted to hear the experiences of those who managed to move past their manic-depression and lead normal lives. So Lizzie hits the road, hoping to find "a herd of her own." Along the way she finds romance and madness, survivors and sufferers, and, somewhere between the lanes, herself. Part road trip, part love story, Detour is a fast-paced, enduring memoir that demystifies mental illness while it embraces the universally human struggle to become whole.
About the Author
Lizzie Simon, a graduate of Columbia University, was the cr