| Hurry Down Sunshine | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 65 reviews)
Sales Rank: 597
Category: Book
Author: Michael Greenberg
Publisher: Other Press
Studio: Other Press
Manufacturer: Other Press
Label: Other Press
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 1590511913
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.1968950092
EAN: 9781590511916
ASIN: 1590511913
Publication Date: September 9, 2008
Release Date: September 9, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
HURRY DOWN SUNSHINE TELLS THE STORY OF THE extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg?s daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally?s visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city?s most sweltering months. ?I feel like I?m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,? Sally says in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place her father could not dream of or imagine. Hurry Down Sunshine is the chronicle of that journey, and its effect on Sally and those closest to her?her brother and grandmother, her mother and stepmother, and, not least of all, the author himself. Among Greenberg?s unforgettable gallery of characters are an unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic Classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary dreams. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane, Hurry Down Sunshine holds the reader in a mesmerizing state of suspension between the mundane and the transcendent.
?The psychotic break of his fifteen-year-old daughter is the grit around which Michael Greenberg forms the pearl that is Hurry Down Sunshine. It is a brilliant, taut, entirely original study of a suffering child and a family and marriage under siege. I know of no other book about madness whose claim to scientific knowledge is so modest and whose artistic achievement is so great.? ? Janet Malcolm, author of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes and The Journalist and the Murderer
?One of the most gripping and disturbingly honest books I have ever read. The courage Michael Greenberg shows in narrating the story of his adolescent daughter?s descent into psychosis is matched byhis acute understanding of how alone each of us, sane or manic, is in our processing of reality and our attempts to get others to appreciate what seems important to us. This isa remarkable memoir.? ? Phillip Lopate, author of Two Marriages and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Michael Greenberg's spare, unflinching memoir begins with a bang: "On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad." Hurry Down Sunshine chronicles the summer when fifteen-year-old Sally experienced her first full-blown manic episode?an event that in a "single stroke" changed her identity and, by extension, that of her entire family. Simply told and beautifully written, Greenberg's memoir shines a stark light on mental illness, painting a vivid picture of a brain and body under siege?mania as a separate living thing squatting within the patient. As a writer who lives "so much in his head," Greenberg is particularly anguished by his daughter's fractured psyche, and his honesty about being both sickened and fascinated by his daughter's condition is breathtaking: "During the worst moments, I think of her as my disease?the disease I must bear...I am intoxicated with Sally's madness in both senses of the word: inebriated and poisoned." So desperate is he to understand her, that he relentlessly researches mental illness (the book is peppered with fascinating insights into drug therapy and anecdotes about writers who struggled with madness), and even goes so far as to sample a full dose of his daughter's medication. Startling, heart-wrenching, and yet unwaveringly unsentimental, Hurry Down Sunshine is an unforgettable story of a young girl's descent into madness, told through the eyes of a harried and helpless father trying desperately to bring her back. --Daphne Durham
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| Customer Reviews: Read 60 more reviews...
Haunting and Hopeful November 11, 2008
Michael Greenberg's memoir of the summer of 1996 describes the months that his daughter was dealing with manic psychosis and was diagnosed as "bipolar 1." It's much more a book about his reactions to her illness, as well as that of his brother and negotiating between his wife and his ex-wife than it is about Sally's actual illness, but it's the book that he's most qualified to write; he wasn't in her head, so he can't say exactly what she was feeling at the time. It's a unique experience that's well-worth the read, and it's a very quick book that's hard to put down.
 prophet or psychotic? October 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't usually read memoirs, but this was an absolutely fascinating read. Within the narrative of his daughter's psychotic break, Greenberg delves into the mysteries of madness, pondering famous--and genious--historic figures who wavered between creative brilliance and complete psychosis.
This book gave me an intimate view of what it is like during a manic episode, and shows the thin line between sane and insane. Almost as stunning as the daughter's "crack up" is Greenberg's own struggle to cope with his daughter's madness, desperately trying to believe that is was drugs, which would wear off, instead of and organic disease in her brain.
Greenberg's prose flows smoothly. This book was difficult to put down. It will give me much food for thought for a long time.
I was hesitant but... October 24, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As someone with Bipolar Disorder, I was hesitant to pick up this memoir. Some recent memoirs have tried to entertain with silly, cartoonish characters as fellow inpatients; and with those too too happy endings.
I couldn't put this book down BECAUSE it was fresh and true. Bipolar disorder isn't easy, all those plans made when you were a brilliant scholar at 18 don't always come true, but you can make a life for yourself.
Sally had a wonderful Therapist/Psyciatrist which is a blessing. You need to do the work, to learn those thoughts that will get you through each day. I, too, was unable to take Lithium which is the only inexpensive Bipolar drug out there, and the cost of prescriptions, even with a co-pay, can be stress inducing; and make medication compliance difficult. All of these things were covered in this wonderful book. But the ending was what I loved the most, you don't have to be the Prize winning Poet or the Supreme Court Justice that everyone thought you would be, But you CAN still have a quiet, delicate, life worth living.
Wonderful October 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wonderfully and poignantly written. I've already read and lent it out to friends to also enjoy it. I highly recommend it.
 very informative October 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love how much research he did for the book. It is like an artistic, crazy history lesson. The mind is powerful and fascinating!
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