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| Hurry Down Sunshine | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Greenberg
Publisher: Other Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy New: $12.49
You Save: $9.51 (43%)
New (41) Used (13) from $11.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 472
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081121221340T
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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 episodean 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 siegemania 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 diseasethe 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 61 more reviews...
 An Engrossing Memoir About Bipolar Disorder July 23, 2008
54 out of 56 found this review helpful
Hurry Down Sunshine, by Michael Greenberg, is right up my alley. I am a nurse working with geriatric psyche patients, and I love a good memoir. The story is about Sally, the author's fifteen year old daughter. Diagnosed as Bipolar, she exhibited classic symptoms of the disease, albeit at a younger age than most. I read this book in a matter of hours, engrossed in the story from beginning to end. The author's extended family adds a cast of colorful characters to the story also. (I found the plight of the authors brother as captivating as Sally's saga...)
This could have been a story about the hopelessness of psyche patients and the ineptness of psychiatrists, therapists and others inevitably encountered when one reluctantly enters a mental health facility, but it wasn't that at all. The Greenberg's were lucky to find a doctor who used both therapy and pharmacology to treat their daughter's disease, and a positive outcome was had. The author went to unusual lengths himself to learn more about the drugs his daughter was prescribed, and you have to applaud him for that also. I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Bipolar Disorder, or someone looking for a good weekend read.
 Memoir on Madness August 27, 2008
20 out of 27 found this review helpful
"On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad." A great opening line introducing a memoir of the summer that Michael Greenburg's daughter, Sally, succumbed to bipolar mental illness (manic depression) and was admitted to a Manhattan psychiatric ward for treatment.
Although an interesting opening, however, it oversimplifies his daughter's condition. It is clear from several brief mentions of Sally's childhood that she exhibited symptoms of possible mental illness for quite some time before this particular day. For instance, Greenburg explains that after he and Sally's mother split up when Sally was six years old, he "defend[ed] her to her teachers, to other parents, [and] to members of our own family flummoxed by the chasm that existed between how Sally and most everyone else saw the world." Additionally, although Sally was very intelligent, she had extreme difficulty in learning to read: "The trick of agreement, of shared meaning, upon which most human exchange is based was eluding her." At age thirteen, her mother was unable to control her; she fell in with an older crowd, coded lyrics about mangled metal and flesh, and "her navel turned black when she stabbed it with a sewing needle, ostensibly a cosmetic piercing."
The story takes place over one summer, starting with Sally's breakdown in July, her hospitilization, and her home treatment with medication and psychiatric therapy. By September, Sally is well enough to return to school and all is apparently well. The prologue tellls us that while Sally has generally been able to lead a normal life, she has suffered from several serious recurrences of her bipolar illness.
I felt that Greenberg could have written about Sally's childhood experiences and family history of mental illness (he has a mentally ill brother) in much more depth. This would have helped the reader to understand the progression of Sally's mental illness, up until the breakdown that caused her father to seek medical treatment for her.
On the whole, this book probably would have worked better as a short story. Alternatively, to really work as a novel the story should have been fleshed out with much more of Sally's childhood experiences and her later adult experiences with bipolar illness.
An interesting read for an introduction to a family dealing with severe mental illness in an adolescent.
RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "SUDDENLY EVERY POINT OF CONNECTION BETWEEN US HAD VANISHED." September 16, 2008
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
The most defenseless moment a parent will ever experience is when they are absolutely helpless in the protection or healing of their child. How many times has a parent caressed the feverish brow of their child and attempted to rock their child to sleep. From the placing of a band aid on a knee... to removing a splinter... a parent has the magical gift of comfort... to their beloved flesh and blood. Even in the more serious case of rushing your child to the emergency room to have a bleeding wound stitched up... you are involved in the security and well being of your bundle of heavenly love (even if he is six-foot-three) that you as a parent have been blessed with.
But how deep would the bottomless abyss of your very soul fall to... if your child's entire persona... including their temperament... and mental acuity... was snatched away... like a thief in the night... in a blink of an eye? What type of inner fortitude would it take for the parent to not only have the strength to climb out of the abyss... but what kind of faith would be necessary to see the light at the end of the pitch black tunnel?
On July 5, 1996 author Michael Greenberg's fifteen-year-old daughter Sally "was struck mad". There was now a chasm between Sally and the rest of the world. How bad was this sudden psychotic crack in the mental health of Michael's teenage daughter? How bad do the "new" mental mannerisms have to be for a Father to continually hope that his daughter has a drug problem? The author writes powerfully in the style of a street poet that is writing words with the pain of his guts. In describing his daughter's outbursts he says: "AND SHE IS TALKING, OR RATHER PUSHING WORDS FROM HER MOUTH THE WAY A SHOPKEEPER PUSHES DUST OUT THE DOOR OF HER SHOP WITH A BROOM." Imagine the anguish for a Father to describe his daughter: "SHE THINKS SHE'S ELOQUENT, WHEN SHE CAN'T PUT TOGETHER A COHERENT SENTENCE." Michael leads the reader on a trip that starts off at the hospital emergency room... and that leads to Sally being admitted to a government mental institution... complete with bullet proof windows and a "quiet-room" with padded walls and a mattress on the floor. "THEY USHER SALLY INTO A TINY SHOEBOX OF A ROOM. A GATED WINDOW, DISPROPORTIONATELY LARGE, LOOMS OVER A NARROW BED A SURREALIST PAINTING IN WHICH THE DREAM IS ENORMOUS, THE DREAMER INCONSEQUENTIALLY SMALL."
The reader will be introduced to a cast of characters ranging from bizarre to pitiful to cruel. And that includes both patients and mental health staff. You will also get a detailed education in the purpose and side effects of drugs used in the treatment of mental disease. The author... in a desperate attempt to understand his daughters plight... actually takes her powerful medicine (un-prescribed and without permission) to try to comprehend her mental prison cell... that is locked with a key of drugs and madness.
The telling of this story from the Father's point of view is so visceral that you feel yourself acting and reacting as if each pulse of the story is beating in your veins. Sally's psychosis appears as if the GPS unit in her brain made a wrong turn and got stuck in a dark alley dead end.
When you finish this book, your emotions will have definitely been touched. And just when you lean back to contemplate what you have been through... there is a short powerful postscript.
Not Much Sunshine, But A Lot of Truth July 29, 2008
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
It can't have been easy for Michael Greenberg to write this book about his daughter. Her psychotic break was extreme for someone so young, and, as in many cases you don't hear about, treatment was a temporary fix. It sounds so simple: find the right meds, stay on the meds, everything works out. Or not. Meds are so subjective. Sometimes they don't work. Or they work for awhile and then stop working and no one knows why. Watching your child--at fifteen, still a child, really--suffer that way, especially when your income and resources are so limited, had to be a nightmare. Kudos to him for putting the story out there. It's a very honest, simple, well-focused account of what the family went through, and what his daughter went through, to the extent that he could know that from the outside. For a novel on a similar subject, check out Halfway House by Katharine Noel, and my blog on books at allthepage.today.com
Better Than Fiction August 6, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Due to a recent diagnosis of a friend I ordered this book to understand bipolar disorder and this book will help readers cope with manic depression. But it is much more than a vivid description of mental illness. Hurry Down Sunshine is a compassionate and wise narrative by a gifted writer.
The book contains a cast of deftly defined characters, including a brother with mental health issues, a supportive ex-wife, the new wife, as well as the afflicted daughter. These authentically rendered individuals give the narrative depth and free it from the plodding self-absorption that mars many memoirs. The book reads more like a novel and better than most fiction I've read recently.
Once I started Hurry Down Sunshine I raced to finish it to its complex, powerful, yet satisfying ending.
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