by Marya Hornbacher is the shattering sort of memoir about which I’ve a personal rule of not starting to read before bedtime. Because I won’t want to put it down until it’s finished.
When we first meet Marya, she’s lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood, having severed an artery while cutting herself. This is what draws us into the living hell of her condition–rapid-cycling Bipolar I, the worst form of the disease.