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This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's summary
A gifted and audacious writer confronts her lifelong battle with depression and her search for release
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime.
Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction. She recounts the travails of growing up in a large, affluent family where there was a paucity of love and basics such as food and clothing despite the presence of a chauffeur and a cook. She goes on to recount her early hospitalization for depression in poignant detail as well as her complex relationship with her mercurial, withholding mother.
Along the way Merkin also discusses her early redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. She eventually marries, has a child, and suffers severe postpartum depression, for which she is again hospitalized. Merkin also discusses her visits to various therapists and psychopharmocologists, which enable her to probe the causes of depression and its various treatments. The book ends in the present, where the writer has learned how to navigate her depression, if not "cure" it, after a third hospitalization in the wake of her mother's death.
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Shanda
- A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
- By: Letty Cottin Pogrebin
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The word "shanda" is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense twentieth-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family.
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Beautifully Written!
- By Adele Aron Greenspun on 01-12-23
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My Life with Bob
- Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
- By: Pamela Paul
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Pamela Paul
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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Native Country of the Heart
- A Memoir
- By: Cherríe Moraga
- Narrated by: Cherríe Moraga
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.
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a must read for all chicanx
- By Rachel Barnett on 04-28-19
By: Cherríe Moraga
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Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
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The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
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The Center Cannot Hold
- By: Elyn R. Saks
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
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Schizophrenia Inside Out
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-23-09
By: Elyn R. Saks
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Identical Strangers
- A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited
- By: Elyse Schein, Paula Bernstein
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo, Effie Johnson
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the astonishing true story of Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein, who shared a personal history for more than three decades - and didn't know it. In her mid-30s, Schein finally decided to call an adoption agency to learn about her biological mother. Not expecting much, she instead got the surprise of her life. Her identical twin sister, Bernstein, lived just minutes away.
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What if you are a twin and don't know it?
- By Joanne on 07-15-08
By: Elyse Schein, and others
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Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
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Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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Sybil Exposed
- The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case
- By: Debbie Nathan
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Debbie Nathan reveals the true story behind the famous case of Sybil, the woman with sixteen different personalities.
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No definitive answer, just speculations all around
- By Amy A on 12-30-18
By: Debbie Nathan
What listeners say about This Close to Happy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Silverthorne
- 03-29-17
Enough!
Daphne Merkin is a good writer, a truly literary and literate person. She is also a huge pain. Although I detest the fashion for "positive thinking," as I made my way laboriously through Daphne's endless preoccupation with suicide, I heard myself saying, "Do it already!" I can only imagine how terrible a task it must be to live with someone who fantasizes about suicide day after day, year after year. Let alone to be such a person. And, of course, it's all her parents' fault, especially Mom, who after all, was only a Holocaust survivor. How could she be expected to understand real needs? But if you can tolerate the author's ceaseless, selfish preoccupation, this is a good book about depression, and the narration is very well done. Toren has a pleasant voice, a good pace and pronunciation, and makes Merkin almost bearable.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Mariaposa
- 03-04-17
I should be the last person to recommend this book
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would recommend this book to anyone trying to understand what depression feels like.
Any additional comments?
I have always said I don't have time for depression, despite having faced a very difficult (and impoverished) childhood, followed by close calls with death (first by assault, then by disease). Let's just say I couldn't imagine having much sympathy for someone with a Park Avenue upbringing. Yet I found myself intrigued by Daphne's story and amazed at how much she is willing to reveal. I don't understand exactly why but I have ended up liking her and giving her props for getting this all down, no matter how long it took. I plan to read more pieces by her.
I do have one problem though -- I don't think she is totally forthcoming about how much her parents footed the bill for some things, like her psychiatric hospitalizations during her 30s and it's kind of unclear if, after her father says he'll buy her an apartment if she promises to keep kosher, and she says no way, who does end up buying the 3 br apartment? I have a suspicion that although her loaded parents are stingy Daphne has that security of knowing that bottom line they are still there for her. Her situation is so different from those who are totally financially on their own. I just wish she would acknowledge that. Because not having to worry about where your next dollar is coming from provides a person with a certain freedom to make choices not available to someone who does have that worry.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Factual
- 02-13-17
Riveting
Excellent book and amazing narration.
A must for anyone has depression or who knows anyone who does.
Powerfully written and artistically read- a very worthwhile read- I highly recommend it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kendra
- 02-28-17
excellent book on depression
loved it. as a fellow depressive it provided consolation that I'm not alone in the struggle.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sudi
- 04-03-17
If You Aren't Depressed When U Start This....
You might get depressed, if you lean that way.
I lean toward depression... this book echoed some of my thoughts. It is well written.
The narrator tended to read every line as though they were dripping acid; I'm not sure Ms. Merkin wrote it that way.
It is a useful insight into one person's eternal wrestling match with a mind that will not be calmed and cannot be tamed to any extent with medicine or therapies.
Sometimes, though, I think if you're NOT depressed, you're not paying enough attention to life.
This book is a good introduction to the caverns of depression for those of you who are NOT depressed but live with someone who is.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jacquelin Atabong
- 05-22-19
I loved it . the narrator was excellent
I loved it . the narrator was excellent. I will share with others good job
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- Amanda
- 05-22-17
I was unable to finis this book.
For someone who enjoys and has studied literature & poetry perhaps, but not for me.
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1 person found this helpful