The Bullet
A Memoir of Madness, Family and the Asylums of the Past
Published on 8. May 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-1-78378-505-6 (ISBN)
Description
Like many people, Tom Lee remembers the presence - somewhere out of sight, on the outskirts of town - of the local psychiatric hospital. It was a place that inspired jokes, rumours and dread, a place where the strange and deranged were kept away. But among those people were, at different times, Tom's own parents.
Afterwards, those times were not much spoken about and before long the hospital closed, as part of the nationwide shutting down of psychiatric institutions. For many years, Tom believed that he had dodged the bullet of mental illness that had marked the lives of his parents. But then, quite out of the blue, he has a crisis of his own and finds himself returning to the past for clues.
The Bullet is an attempt to piece together and understand what happened to his parents and what happened to him. It is also a story about how we have tried and spectacularly failed to care for people suffering with mental illness, and about the terrifying fragility and unknowability of the human mind.
Afterwards, those times were not much spoken about and before long the hospital closed, as part of the nationwide shutting down of psychiatric institutions. For many years, Tom believed that he had dodged the bullet of mental illness that had marked the lives of his parents. But then, quite out of the blue, he has a crisis of his own and finds himself returning to the past for clues.
The Bullet is an attempt to piece together and understand what happened to his parents and what happened to him. It is also a story about how we have tried and spectacularly failed to care for people suffering with mental illness, and about the terrifying fragility and unknowability of the human mind.
Reviews / Votes
The Bullet offers a deeply moving personal account of what it is like to live with mental illness, the terror and mystery of why and how we break - and it also grapples with the politics of mental health care * New Statesman * [A] fragile and unforgettable memoir * Spectator * A bold, brave and clear-headed account of the affliction of crushing anxiety. Tom Lee writes with great humanity; I felt - and lived - every word of it -- Benjamin Myers It's a rare book that can convey such distressingly wordless psychic states in such luminous and vivid prose. But Lee goes further, casting these deeply intimate stories of self and family in the shadow of the history and sorry decline of Britain's mental health services. And he manages to make all this as compulsively readable as it is intellectually satisfying -- Josh Cohen With quiet insight and perfectly judged prose, Tom Lee sets fires in the brain that burn long after you close the book -- Meg Rosoff Tom Lee reckons with mental illness, with family, with masculinity in lucid prose of breathtaking honesty. But in The Bullet he performs a wider service too, analysing the ways in which Britain's infrastructure of care has been effectively demolished over the course of decades. It is a story that moves the reader to empathy and anger both -- Erica Wagner Extraordinary, informative and searingly personal... A memoir that is full of wisdom and beauty, both artful and necessary. An important contribution to our understanding of mental illness and the myths that surround it -- Lily Dunn A haunting and moving blend of family memoir and medical history. Tom Lee is an enthralling storyteller and this is an outstanding book -- Chris Power A family history, an institutional history, a personal history: the war with your own mind that is mental illness, explored with a writer's skill and painstaking clarity, so that anyone who has ever drifted into it or near it will recognise Tom Lee's account, and be grateful that states so internal and isolating can, after all, be communicated -- Francis Spufford Deeply personal, but never self-pitying, this is a frank, and quietly overwhelming book. It left a sort of aftermath when I'd read it -- Cynan Jones A gripping tale of one man's battle against inherited demons * Tablet *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
159 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78378-505-6 (9781783785056)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
TOM LEE is the author of The Alarming Palsy of James Orr, a novel, and Greenfly, a collection of short stories. He lives in South London and teaches at Goldsmiths.