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sadie_slater's review
4.0
I bought Gwyneth Lewis’s Sunbathing in the Rain a few years ago, when I'd been fairly severely depressed for a long time; I'd spotted the subtitle "A Cheerful Book About Depression" and thought that sounded like just what I needed. At the time, though, it didn't quite work for me; I had been walking around, continuing to work and go through the motions of normal life while feeling utterly miserable for about three years at that point, and I just couldn't relate to an account of a sudden and utterly debilitating episode of depression which saw Lewis taking eleven months off work. Compared to this, my depression seemed to be too minor to make such a fuss about, but also too minor to let me follow the path Lewis advises of using a depressive episode to make helpful changes to my life.
I picked the book up again this weekend as Lewis is giving the annual Disability Lecture at work this week, and I've registered to attend. This time, it worked much better for me, probably because although I have been very low lately I am feeling a bit better and am not using every scrap of mental energy I possess just to get through each day. (Was I really that much less depressed than Lewis describes being, back when I first tried the book? Quite possibly not, I was just utterly bloody-minded and too scared to take any time off because I wasn't sure I'd ever manage to go back, and my sick pay is finite.) I found it an interesting read; part memoir of some of the key events feeding in to Lewis's depression, part description of the process of recovery, part reflection on the lessons she learnt, interspersed with relevant quotes from other works. Lewis is a poet, and her prose is beautiful too, and I really appreciated the honesty with which she approaches the circumstances in her life which led her to her breakdown and the thoughtfulness of her analysis of her recovery. It's not a self-help book, but it raises questions that I want to ponder more (particularly the suggestion that rather than depression being a result of the past circumstances and current problems which swirl around in the depressed person's head, the depression comes first and latches on to those memories and thoughts) and, although I'm not sure I'd really describe it as a cheerful book, it's definitely a very optimistic book, with its focus on the possibility of recovery. I'm looking forward to the lecture now.
I picked the book up again this weekend as Lewis is giving the annual Disability Lecture at work this week, and I've registered to attend. This time, it worked much better for me, probably because although I have been very low lately I am feeling a bit better and am not using every scrap of mental energy I possess just to get through each day. (Was I really that much less depressed than Lewis describes being, back when I first tried the book? Quite possibly not, I was just utterly bloody-minded and too scared to take any time off because I wasn't sure I'd ever manage to go back, and my sick pay is finite.) I found it an interesting read; part memoir of some of the key events feeding in to Lewis's depression, part description of the process of recovery, part reflection on the lessons she learnt, interspersed with relevant quotes from other works. Lewis is a poet, and her prose is beautiful too, and I really appreciated the honesty with which she approaches the circumstances in her life which led her to her breakdown and the thoughtfulness of her analysis of her recovery. It's not a self-help book, but it raises questions that I want to ponder more (particularly the suggestion that rather than depression being a result of the past circumstances and current problems which swirl around in the depressed person's head, the depression comes first and latches on to those memories and thoughts) and, although I'm not sure I'd really describe it as a cheerful book, it's definitely a very optimistic book, with its focus on the possibility of recovery. I'm looking forward to the lecture now.
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