Henry's Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, a her and Son's Story Paperback – 8 Dec 2011

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Review ------ ""Henry's Demons" is the harrowing yet hopeful story of the descent into schizophrenia of UK journalist Patrick Cockburn's son Henry at age 20. Henry's self-reflections are the stuff of raw genius." -"Elle" "A compelling, powerful first person account of the gritty realities of living with serious mental illness. Patrick and Henry are utterly real." -- Mark Vonnegut, M.D., author of "Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So" and "The Eden Express" "A gripping drama of family life in a maelstrom. The Cockburns bring home the rigors of major mental illness...This is a kind of war-and-peace story, with internal and external turmoil, hope, sabotage, and surprise. A mind-bending, heart-rending psychological classic." --" Library Journal" ""Henry's Demons" offers a bifocal view of schizophrenia and its impact on a family. This myth-shredding, light-shedding account explores a condition that few present-tense 'insiders' have ever written about. Patrick Cockburn writes with a journalist's lucidity; Henry Cockburn's descriptions of how someone with schizophrenia sees the world recall certain cult-artists such as Bruno Schulz and Syd Barrett. A truly remarkable book, and a brave one." --David Mitchell, author of "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" and "Cloud Atlas" "A living, breathing book... "Henry's Demons" is a probing tour through the glories (and occasional idiocies) of the British care system, through the history of schizophrenia and through the often barbarous ways patients have been treated. It's a tour, too, through the psyches of two bright people watching their son unravel, the st pulled from his mind like wool from the bottom of a sweater. Nearly every aspect of this family's life is interesting and quasi-novelistic." --Dwight Garner, "The New York Times" "Together, her and son illuminate how "madness" can be as generative as it is devastating. This is an inspiring testament to the power of family to save and sustain each other through adversity, one written with great humanity and grace. The tenderness and terror in these pages stayed with me for days. Touchingly, it is Henry who has the last word, and it is one of hope." --Claire Fontaine, coauthor of "Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back" "Just as Henry Cockburn's beautiful and ingenious paintings were a clue to his distraught mental state, so this intensely moving collaboration with his her and mother illustrates the ways in which suffering and trauma can be the gateway to love, solidarity, and even healing. There is poetry in this prose: the bipolarity of misery and exaltation that Blake understood." --Christopher Hitchens "This is, yes, a book about a serious mental illness, but it is much more -- it is a story of a her's love for a child and the ability of a desperately ill child to perceive the force of that love and use it as a source of strength. It is also a brutally honest account of parental missed signals and misunderstandings -- not surprising, though, given Patrick Cockburn's career of telling it as it is." --Seymour M. Hersh "You close "Henry's Demons" with a profound sense of -gratitude for this family's courage in sharing what they have endured and crafting it into something of use -- and of beauty." --"Daily Mail" About the Author ---------------- Patrick Cockburn is Iraq correspondent for the Independent in London. He has received the Martha Gellhorn prize for war reporting, the James Cameron Award, and the Orwell Prize for Journalism. He is the author of Muqtada, about war and rebellion in Iraq; The Occupation (shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007); The Broken Boy, a memoir; and with Andrew Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein.