Marbles by Ellen Forney: It’s no secret that loads of famous artists suffered mental health problems, often severe and untreated. But will medication rob one of one’s creativity? What if the mental health issues are key to the art? In this unabashedly frank graphic memoir, Forney relates her adventures with bipolar syndrome, from diagnosis to eventual stability. Her ups and downs, as well as her fear of being “cured”, were very familiar to me, almost uncomfortably so. It made me want to read some of the other books Forney references, from The Unquiet Mind to biographies of various artists. This is a good book both for those suffering bipolar syndrome and for those hoping to understand the disease better from the outside. And, being a graphic work with drawings that somehow manage to be at once both simplistic and incredibly detailed, it’s a very quick read. I devoured it in two short evenings.
Also posted on BookCrossing.