Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 30th April 2024
Hardback
Published: 30th July 2024
Paperback
Published: 13th May 2025
Committed: A Memoir of Finding Meaning in Madness
By (Author) Suzanne Scanlon
John Murray Press
John Murray Publishers Ltd
30th July 2024
25th April 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Coping with / advice about mental health issues
Gender studies: women and girls
616.890082
Hardback
368
Width 146mm, Height 218mm, Spine 34mm
480g
'Visceral, raw and tender, this candid and timely memoir is, at heart, a love-letter to the profound and redemptive power of literature' Annabel Abbs
'Among the very finest and most intelligent memoirs ever written' Clancy Martin'An immensely talented writer, at her finest, cutting through propriety and convention to reach what is essential, meaningful, real' Amina CainWhen Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s and grieving the loss of her mother, she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute.After nearly three years and countless experimental treatments, Suzanne left the ward on shaky legs. In the decades it took her to recover from the experience, Suzanne came to understand her suffering as part of something larger: a long tradition of women whose complicated and compromised stories of self-discovery are reduced to 'madwoman' narratives. Transporting, honest, and unflinching, Suzanne recounts her story alongside her reading of writers from the 'madwoman canon' - including Audre Lorde, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and radical feminist Shulamith Firestone. The result is a profoundly moving journey through madness, from breakdown to breakthrough, and a revelatory exploration of being a woman and being mad - and how interwoven those experiences can be.Suzanne Scanlon is a feminist writer, educator and mental health advocate and is the author of two works of fiction published by indie presses: Promising Young Women (Dorothy, 2012) and Her 37th Year, An Index (Noemi Press, 2015). Her writing has appeared in Granta, BOMB Magazine, Iowa Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She teaches creative writing. Committed is her first work of nonfiction.