I'm a sucker for memoirs and this one drew me in immediately. I honestly couldn't put it down!
The author's story unfolds in bits and pieces and in a swirling, non-chronological order that would normally drive me nuts. But it worked for this story. It was like entering the author's rapid-cycling bipolar mind. Or any of our minds, really. We let our thoughts drift off to all sorts of periods in our life as we move through our days. That's what it was like to read this story.
Rob Roberge is many things: a writer, an addict, a drifter, a husband, and a person afflicted with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder that often leads to early dementia. It is this concern that seems to have lead him to write down his tale, memory-by-memory, before they are gone.
What a life he's lead! Much of it dysfunctional, but riveting in the way many stories are when people are able to put their lives in perspective and see how out-of-control things had been. Every time I picked up this book, I couldn't put it down. I thought I'd just read one more vignette. Then one more. Maybe one more. And before I knew it, I was done.
It's hard to find something else to read after a book like this. That's the mark of a great book to me.
*I received this book in return for my honest review. Lucky me.
