Rating: 
Summary: Coming of Age
Review: This is a coming of age book if there ever was one. Throughout the book, Lizzie talks to the reader, reminding us that she is an idealistic, talented girl. I get the impression she was looking at one of her journals that she references frequently and thought "I could publish this and be a star." I would add to this book a foreword by someone in the medical profession to provide the disclaimer that this is Lizzie's opinion of the bipolar affective disorder and that it is not a dummies guide to bipolar. My critque is in Lizzie's self-character development. The whole business of drive around in Daddy's SUV and interview Daddy's friends' patients was basically meaningless. Just statistics. Perhaps a collection of essays by people would have been better. Her relationship with a unstable person could have been expanded on to much benefit. This is why I term this book 'coming of age.' Her discovery that she can't make herself better by giving it all to someone who is worse of than her is a critical point for the mentally ill, drug addicted, etc. In her emphasis to find her clique, er, herd, she realizes the illness does not define her. I am suspecting that Detour 2 will have more insights as Lizzie grows beyond her ivory tower, so to speak. This said, the book is a quick, fast read. I see it as breaking new ground and hope there will be some books or essays available that are not written by celebrities (Patty Duke, Carrie Fisher) or rich white girls (Lizzie Simon), but instead from the perspective of one of the many average yet function mentally ill. I think it is an excellent book for anyone looking to get a anectdotal information on manic-depresson or who enjoys the coming of age genre. Lizzie Simon deserves praise for sharing her coming of age as a bipolar kid story. She also deserves praise for taking on the role of spokesperson of the young to this important issue. Read the book, but take it with a grain of salt.
Rating: 
Summary: Very compelling...
Review: This is a difficult review to write. Ultimately, I am reviewing this book through my own experiances as a bipolar person. And I suppose I am filtering her experiences through mine which are both more...and less than hers. The books starts at the place where she becomes most *ill*...symptomatic, if you will. She is prescribed an anti-depressant and becomes manic in the extreme. The CIA is around every dark corner, sleep becomes foreign and the mundane takes on evil connotations. It is the discription that is probably portrayed in crime drama prime time television the most. Ultimately, with diagnosis and medication her life evens out (to the extent that a bipolar person's life can really ever even out) and she decides to find her *herd*... People that she will have the most in commom with... People who are young and successful... People who, I think, she can draw the knowledge she can succeed from. The book is of her travels cross country in her father's SUV interviewing bipolar people who were diagnosed between 16 and 35 years of age. It is of how they feel, how she feels about them... and ultimately how her disorder intersects with the book and her relationships. I had reservations about reading the book and how it would make me feel. In the end, I am glad I did. I think that her observations were astute, non-judgemental, and not self-serving. I think she was very open and very clear and correct about her observations of *stigma* in our society. How it affects and effects people, how it's very insideous. I think she is correct in that there isn't one *bipolar herd* to be found and that people can and do do very well. That success is an individual measurement and best measured by the individual. I would hope that non-bipolar people reading this book would grap these things as well as other things... including the courage showed by everyone in this book, just to go on another day, just to try one more drug, just to make amends for things done. I had alot of sceptical feelings going in... but I had nothing but positive feelings on the way out. Full cycle, you might say.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging, yet half-baked
Review: This is a tricky review to write since I have tremendously mixed feelings about this book. Ms. Simon has a good voice as a writer, but this book still came across to me as half-baked. Between the pages that were three-quarters empty and the wide double-spaced lines, I felt like I was reading a final paper someone turned in for a freshman year composition class after procrastinating too long. She also comes across as elitist and cloistered, particularly when she visits the South. I mean, how worldly do you have to be to realize that people on the whole take religion pretty seriously in the South? She is dumbfounded by that. There is more to the world than Providence prep school, Paris, and Columbia. And I question her methods of tracking down successful bipolar people. I wouldn't expect to find successful (by her definition, anyway) bipolar people by contacting local public support groups. Usually you're in support groups when you're not doing so hot, then you do better and you leave. She would have been better off figuring out who the high-dollar psychiatrists were in different cities and contacting them for their successful patients. Instead we get her driving around, sort of taking a vacation, sort of working, making a bunch of calls, and hoping it falls together. And in some ways it did fall together: I really value her story of her illness and the way she described it. It was moving and gripping. Also, her interviews with the more successful people and the contrast with Nicholas was very enlightening. There are a lot of self-medicating bipolar people out there that manage to get by but are living on a knife edge. It's good to read about some people who have figured out a healthy way to manage their illness. Despite my critical tone though, I did really enjoy most of the book, but I was left wanting more, both in a positive and negative sense.
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