Vivid memoir of anxiety and depression, which he terms "suicide." ( )

This is not one for the downhearted; it's quite depressing and the uplift at the end is more of a "well, maybe, for now." Antrim, a fairly successful writer, begins by describing in detail a night in 2006 spent on the roof of his apartment building, hanging from the fire escape, trying to decide whether or not to let go. This incident leads to a series of hospitalizations, therapy, clinical trials, and, after initial resistance, a course of ECT ("shock treatment"). Ironically, it was a phone call from the celebrated David Foster Wallace--an author that Antrim admired but with whom he had only slight acquaintance--that persuaded him to give ECT a go. Wallace himself committed suicide in 2008. Antrim details his "recovery" (or "recoveries"), each inevitably followed by another setback. Resisting the diagnosis of "depression," he proposes that the inclination towards suicide is a condition in itself, perhaps kicked off by childhood experiences but not subject to the usual treatments for depression. Antrim's parents were both alcoholic, and both were also abusers; his beloved mother took her rage at her husband out on her son. At the time of his suicide attempt, lost in grief but with mixed feeling about her death, he was working on a a memoir of his mother. It's no surprise that Antrim's relationships with women were, for the most part, unsuccessful. Although he appears to be in a goo relationship at the memoir's end, one can't help but wonder for how long.

Antrim's memoir is an honest one, holding nothing back. One Friday in April has been well received and compared to William Styron's Darkness Visible. It's a difficult book to say one "enjoyed" reading, but Antrim's insights were illuminating. ( )