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A review by marsius
Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
4.0
"Count your blessings,” the captain says, “And if you count less than ten, cut off the remaining fingers.”
I wish I could have read Challenger Deep without having heard that it touched on mental illness, but there's simply no way to avoid that knowledge. The blurbs on the back declare it to be among the best portrayals of mental illness ever written, the interviews and talk shows bring in experts on psychosis, and the hardcover even comes with stickers on it declaring its content. Even so, that this books exists, that we have the opportunity to read it, is a blessing to us all.
Shusterman's portrayal of the onset and descent into psychosis, largely informed by the experiences of his own son, are haunting and full of insight. It's also disorienting. He writes in the first person and in the present tense, and as the protagonist begins to blur reality and his own psychoses, the prose begins to blur reality for the reader. Thankfully, the false reality is as engrossing and fleshed out as the real one.
One fun bonus: it's written in 161 chapters of 320 pages, a series of vignettes making up a complete narrative. The upshot is that it's almost perfectly written for commuting by public transit, as you're always right near the end of a chapter. Of course, there's a minor problem in that I had difficulty putting it down, but that's just something I had to deal with.
Overall, highly recommended.
I wish I could have read Challenger Deep without having heard that it touched on mental illness, but there's simply no way to avoid that knowledge. The blurbs on the back declare it to be among the best portrayals of mental illness ever written, the interviews and talk shows bring in experts on psychosis, and the hardcover even comes with stickers on it declaring its content. Even so, that this books exists, that we have the opportunity to read it, is a blessing to us all.
Shusterman's portrayal of the onset and descent into psychosis, largely informed by the experiences of his own son, are haunting and full of insight. It's also disorienting. He writes in the first person and in the present tense, and as the protagonist begins to blur reality and his own psychoses, the prose begins to blur reality for the reader. Thankfully, the false reality is as engrossing and fleshed out as the real one.
One fun bonus: it's written in 161 chapters of 320 pages, a series of vignettes making up a complete narrative. The upshot is that it's almost perfectly written for commuting by public transit, as you're always right near the end of a chapter. Of course, there's a minor problem in that I had difficulty putting it down, but that's just something I had to deal with.
Overall, highly recommended.