In Madness: A Bipolar Life, author Marya Hornbacher reveals her lifelong struggle with Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, the most serious form of the illness.

Hornbacher was not diagnosed until she was 24, but the symptoms were apparent even when she was a small child. Her eating disorder, alcoholism and self-mutilation often disguised the root problem.

In the memoir, she relates her frighteningly dramatic manias and paranoia, as well as her equally debilitating cycles of depression. In and out of psychiatric hospitals numerous times, Hornbacher reveals her struggles to better understand her illness and get the help necessary to control it as best she can.

Although the ending of Madness: A Bipolar Life is rather ambiguous, it reveals a modicum of hope. However, Hornbacher also relates an understanding that she is bipolar for life and episodes could occur any time.

The successful author very openly describes her experiences in Madness: A Bipolar Life, and the view is at times uncomfortably intimate. It is frustrating reading the tell-tale symptoms of her slipping into a manic episode, while she is unaware and not taking proper care of herself. But Hornbacher conveys the careening, stumbling, nonsensical thoughts of the mania and the oppressing depressive thoughts well, and even the reader feels exhausted from her rapid mood cycles.

Hornbacher's writing style is visceral and unapologetic, yet also painfully self-aware and hypercritical. Madness: A Bipolar Life provides a powerful firsthand account of an often-misunderstood mental illness. Although not at all objective and at times disjointed, Hornbacher's memoir is a compelling read, particularly for those interested in or suffering from bipolar or other mental illnesses.

- Ashley