A Depression of One’s Own: Daphne Merkin’s ‘This Close to Happy”

In “This Close to Happy” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Daphne Merkin, novelist (‘Enchantment’) and essayist (‘Dreaming of Hitler’ and ‘The Fame Lunches’) has written a compelling chronicle of her traumatized childhood and an adult life marked by repeated bouts of severe depression.

Although it would be easy to characterize Merkin’s memoir as part of an established genre of books about surviving depression that includes William Styron’s ‘Darkness Visible’, Andrew Solomon’s ‘The Noonday Demon’, Susanna Kaysen’s ‘Sleep Interrupted’ and Kay Redfield’s ‘An Unquiet Mind’, Merkin’s work is unique in describing the mundane burden of a deeply felt and closely observed life lived with depression. TO READ MORE CLICK HERE

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