Sharp: A Memoir
3.5/5
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About this ebook
David Fitzpatrick’s Sharp is an extraordinary memoir—a fascinating, disturbing look into the mind of a man who, in his early 20s, began cutting himself due to a severe mental illness. A beautifully written treatment of a powerful subject, Fitzpatrick—whose symptoms included extreme depression and self-mutilation—writes movingly and honestly about his affliction and inspires readers with his courage, joining the literary ranks of Terri Cheney (Manic), Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors), Marya Hornbacher (Wasted), and Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted).
“A harrowing journey from self-destructive psychosis to a cautious re-emergence into the flickering sunshine of the sane world….Fitzpatrick writes about mental illness with the unsparing intensity of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton but also with the hard-won self-knowledge of William Styron, Kay Jamison, and other chroniclers of disease, recovery, and management…. A must read, remarkably told.”
—Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much is True
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Reviews for Sharp
25 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is heart-breaking, breath-taking, hard to read, worth reading. The writing is so honest about the author's experience of mental illness and quite horrifying cutting that it is extremely painful to read and I sometimes had to develop a kind of split vision while reading to deliberately alienate myself from him and his wishes and actions. Yet the book is an experience in itself. If you can make it through, i think you will find you develop some empathy for people with this particular expression of mental illness. If you express mental illness in this way, it may give you hope. It is a book which is serious in intent, and I believe it achieves its healing aim.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a really hard book to read. The author suffers from mental illness (a bipolar disorder among other issues) and from his early 20's for more than a decade he cuts and burns himself and spends long years inside and out of mental institutions. I cannot understand how someone can be as ill as David and yet come through it at the end which is what he did. I guess this is what the book has me struggling to fully comprehend - that someone so ill can eventually get to a place of relative wellness and let go of their harming behaviours. I am amazed by David's honesty and courage in writing this memoir - I hope he never feels the compulsion to self-harm again.
1 person found this helpful