Customer Reviews

Hurry Down Sunshine: A Father's Story of Love and Madness (Vintage)

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1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

As the mother of a daughter who is the same age as Sally Greenberg, but who wasn't diagnosed as bipolar until three years after Sally, I could certainly relate to this book. My daughter's first bipolar psychosis was triggered when we were thousands of miles from home, in London, England of all places. It was a terrifying experience for us all. Thankfully she was eventually properly diagnosed (after having to cut her vacation short) and is a productive, lovely 27-year-old today. I could certainl relate to Greenberg's experiences with his daughter. And the love he has for her. This is recommended not only for parents of bipolar children, who should certainly read it, but for those who enjoy mesmerizing, well-written memoirs. Even though this brought back some of the darkest days of my life, I am very thankful to have read it.

Sally Greenberg, a bright, creative teenager in New York City, emotionally broke down.

Her father, Michael Greenberg, reflected on his daughter's mental difficulties, including the heavy medication, her frustration, and waiting for her diagnosis - along with the manifestation of bipolar 1 (unusual before the teen years have ended).

Greenberg loves his daughter, hates her actions, looks at how she affects everyone around her. He, himself, is torn in a thousand directions, from his wife to his ex-wife, from a producer looking at his book to a landlord who wants Greenberg to read his attempt at writing. His wife has a deadline for her latest show. One of Greenberg's brothers suffers from mental illness, while his other brothers appear healthy. Anyone who loves a bipolar (or similarly affected) person has asked Why is s/he/I OK while I/he/she has this crippling affliction? The family meets, in the hospital ward, a Hasidic family, a University professor, and a woman so crippled by her illness that she can barely make it to the bathroom. These people share the ward, their families and peers do not. Why? we've asked.

The writing of "Hurry Down Sunshine" is incredibly good and, at times, brilliant. When, for example, Greenberg recounts the murder of Sally's schoolmate by the girl's - Lisa Steinberg - father, he writes, "...Tevye's grandchildren are murdering their daughters."

Cleverly told, often profound, "Hurry Down Sunshine" gives the reader a glimpse, however brief, of the life of a bipolar teenager AND that of her family. Page by page, medication tweak by medication tweak, we hope that Sally will "make it," but fear that she'll fatally crash. Until the end, you won't know, but you'll keep reading until you do.

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

On July 5, 1996, Michael Greenberg suddenly had to face the fact that his fifteen-year-old daughter was exhibiting severe mental problems. Hoping at first that her mania was drug-induced so that it could more easily be corrected, Greenberg finally came to realize that he and the girl's stepmother had completely missed his daughter's gradual descent into the illness that would require her to be committed for a time to a New York City mental health facility for treatment. Hurry Down Sunshine is Greenberg's account of what his family faced that summer and how they survived the crisis.

What Michael Greenberg has to say as he describes his family's experience is somewhat terrifying and comforting at the same time. On the one hand, he and his daughter, Sally, were lucky that they stumbled onto caring professionals from the beginning, starting with the policeman who recognized Sally's irrational behavior on the street and brought her home, on to those who manned the mental health facility itself, and ending with the woman who treated Sally after her release from that hospital. Sally's best interests were always foremost in the minds of these people. On the other hand, Greenberg was a self-employed writer with very little in the way of cash or other assets that could be earmarked to pay for Sally's treatment. Consider his shock, for instance, when he went to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription drugs for the first time and was told that they would cost him $750 since he had no medical insurance.

Sally was slow to get better and, as Greenberg and his wife faced mental, physical and emotional exhaustion, they found indications that Sally was making any progress hard to detect. Greenberg had to deal with a multitude of family situations in addition to his worries about his daughter's future, assuring that the summer of 1996 would be one he would never forget. There was the older brother, suffering mental problems of his on and for whom Greenberg had assumed some financial responsibility, the tension of watching his former and current wives forced into intimate proximity during the immediate crisis, the pressure to write something that would generate an immediate income, and the stress that culminated one night with him slapping his wife in the face and having to deal with the policemen called to the apartment by his terrified daughter.

Hurry Down Sunshine is an unflinching look through the eyes of a man who would have done anything to spare his daughter the pain of her illness and still wonders how he could have missed the early signs that she needed professional help. Much too harshly, he seems to blame himself for what happened to Sally and still mourns the loss of the daughter he once had, that bright teenager with an unlimited future ahead of her, who was replaced by a fragile young woman forever dependent on the medication that makes it possible for her to cope with life.

Sally's story, sad as it is, is the perfect illustration of how mental illness changes the lives of more people than just the one bearing the brunt of the illness. Parents may find this a difficult book to read but what Michael Greenberg has to say about his family's tragic summer and its aftermath will leave them better able to cope with anything similar that might one day happen to them and their own children.

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.

"On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad."

With that perfect opening line author Michael Greenberg draws us into his bewildering summer 12 years ago, when he and his family learned more than they wanted to know about the frustrating world of mental illness. He writes with a more literate pen than many, in this age of books written at the sixth-grade reading level, and does so with enough feeling that I got to know these people well enough that I wish his book were twice as long. If that's my only complaint, you know I have to rate this as one of the best books I've read in years.

"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.

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.