Why Charity loves this book
What a well structured and brilliant book! Aviv explores the roots and treatment of mental illness and asks the question, where does diagnosis, societal conditions, treatment, and our sense of self collide, overlap and blur. Sometimes a book comes along and I think, I wish I wrote this - this is one of those.
4 authors picked Strangers to Ourselves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The highly anticipated debut from the award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv is a ground-breaking exploration of illness and the mind
Strangers to Ourselves is a compassionate, courageous and riveting look at the ways we talk about and understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on unpublished journals and letters, along with deep reporting, it follows people who feel as if they have reached the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. Their diagnosis, while giving their experiences a name, also shapes their sense of what their future may look like-and their identities, too.
Rachel Aviv is…