Heavy Light

Reviews / Votes

A beautiful, unflinchingly honest book about madness, mania, parenting, surviving and, above all, love and its power to heal us * Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life and Breathtaking * A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better, that forensically tracks the footprints of both journeys towards a settlement with the self -- Jeanette Winterson Readers of Clare's game-changing memoir . . . will be struck by the fact that a mind so recently dominated by straight-to-DVD fantasies is now capable of reflecting on them with so much gentle wisdom and acute self-awareness. And in such beautiful, witty prose * Daily Telegraph * Hard-hitting but tender-hearted . . . Clare thoughtfully and determinedly seeks to challenge the status-quo on treatment for mental health conditions * Independent * What a gift...having such an articulate agent, reporting back from the far edges of the mind * Sunday Times * I loved Heavy Light: its honesty, its questing intelligence...his description of our threadbare mental health services, and the inhuman pressures on those who work in them, is heart-breaking. We have to do better * British Medical Journal * A shattering journey . . . remarkable -- Sheena Joughin * Times Literary Supplement * Clare is a wildly endearing narrator of his own turmoil . . . [his] is a persuasive argument not only against chemical answers to his own illness, but also against the hasty (and often permanent) way individuals are labelled with diagnostic categories -- Brian Dillon * Financial Times * Compelling, beautifully-written and utterly devastating. A balm in itself -- Katie Law * Evening Standard * Clare brilliantly describes his mania... But he has a wider purpose here. Following his discharge from hospital Clare sets out to explore alternatives to the lifetime of terrifyingly strong medication he has been prescribed -- Stephanie Cross * Lady *