- From the author of the best-selling Wasted, the most astonishing dispatch to date from inside the belly of bipolar.
- When Marya Hornbacher published her first book, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, she did not yet know the underlying reason for the constant battle with chaos and terror in her life. Then, at age twenty-four, she was diagnosed with an extreme form of bipolar disorder.
- In Madness, in her trademark wry and utterly self-revealing voice, Hornbacher tells her new story. From the book's opening scene, "The Cut," we understand we are in the presence of a gifted writer willing to take us with her on the wildest ride imaginable. Hornbacher's memories of a childhood that felt very wrong—her mother literally holding her down in a warm bath was the only thing that could calm her—are indelible. Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her desperate attempts to contain violently careening mood swings—self-starvation, substance abuse, addiction, numbing sex—as they play out against the backgrounds of an exclusive Midwestern arts boarding school, chic San Francisco during the go-go-years, and countless locked wards.
- How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live and do her work in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage—where bipolar always beckons—is at the heart of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.
- “With haunting candor, Marya Hornbacher takes us on a harrowing but heroic journey from horrific darkness into light. Madness is impossible to put down. Hornbacher not only survived a nightmare; she emerged with deep understanding and insight. She has written a stunning memoir of anguish and resilience, terror and transformation.”
- —David Scheff, author of Beautiful Boy