Customer Reviews

Beyond Depression

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I first read this book in 1992 and have read it every year since then. The book is like a refrigerator when you're feeling hungry. You open it, stare inside and sometimes you find exactly what you want but sometimes you don't.
It's a book written as a conversation, a conversation between you and Andrew. He tells you his story and he asks you to tell him yours. In that process of exchange, you can hate him, lose hope and feel despair all in one chapter, only to be challenged and feel elated and hopeful in the next. I suppose what brings me back to it every year is the requirement (for me anyway) to share my despair and feelings of hopelessness with someone who understands the terrain as well as I do. He takes you to hell (his hell) and asks you to sit with him there. He offers to join you in your hell and sits there with you. Like a couple of hapless tourists, you soon discover together, that the way out of hell isn't easy. Its easier if you're not alone though and if you collaborate in the escape with a fellow traveller.
You never feel with this book that you are being led away from your depression by somebody who understands the mechanism but who has never felt the pain of it. The opposite is true. You are on a journey through the pain of your depression with somebody (like you) who wants to understand the mechanics of it.
Cliché-This book changed my life- It changed it in the same way as a close friend or a lover can. It sat silent with me, talked to me, listened to me and made me feel hopeful. Read it