Hurry Down Sunshine

The most defenseless moment a parent will ever experience is when they are absolutely helpless in the protection or healing of their child. How many times has a parent caressed the feverish brow of their child and attempted to rock their child to sleep. From the placing of a band aid on a knee... to removing a splinter... a parent has the magical gift of comfort... to their beloved flesh and blood. Even in the more serious case of rushing your child to the emergency room to have a bleeding wound stitched up... you are involved in the security and well being of your bundle of heavenly love (even if he is six-foot-three) that you as a parent have been blessed with. But how deep would the bottomless abyss of your very soul fall to... if your child's entire persona... including their temperament... and mental acuity... was snatched away... like a thief in the night... in a blink of an eye? What type of inner fortitude would it take for the parent to not only have the strength to climb out of the abyss... but what kind of faith would be necessary to see the light at the end of the pitch black tunnel? On July 5, 1996 author Michael Greenberg's fifteen-year-old daughter Sally "was struck mad". There was now a chasm between Sally and the rest of the world. How bad was this sudden psychotic crack in the mental health of Michael's teenage daughter? How bad do the "new" mental mannerisms have to be for a Father to continually hope that his daughter has a drug problem? The author writes powerfully in the style of a street poet that is writing words with the pain of his guts. In describing his daughter's outbursts he says: "AND SHE IS TALKING, OR RATHER PUSHING WORDS FROM HER MOUTH THE WAY A SHOPKEEPER PUSHES DUST OUT THE DOOR OF HER SHOP WITH A BROOM." Imagine the anguish for a Father to describe his daughter: "SHE THINKS SHE'S ELOQUENT, WHEN SHE CAN'T PUT TOGETHER A COHERENT SENTENCE." Michael leads the reader on a trip that starts off at the hospital emergency room... and that leads to Sally being admitted to a government mental institution... complete with bullet proof windows and a "quiet-room" with padded walls and a mattress on the floor. "THEY USHER SALLY INTO A TINY SHOEBOX OF A ROOM. A GATED WINDOW, DISPROPORTIONATELY LARGE, LOOMS OVER A NARROW BED A SURREALIST PAINTING IN WHICH THE DREAM IS ENORMOUS, THE DREAMER INCONSEQUENTIALLY SMALL." The reader will be introduced to a cast of characters ranging from bizarre to pitiful to cruel. And that includes both patients and mental health staff. You will also get a detailed education in the purpose and side effects of drugs used in the treatment of mental disease. The author... in a desperate attempt to understand his daughters plight... actually takes her powerful medicine (un-prescribed and without permission) to try to comprehend her mental prison cell... that is locked with a key of drugs and madness. The telling of this story from the Father's point of view is so visceral that you feel yourself a

Sally Greenberg, a bright, creative teenager in New York City, emotionally broke down. Her father, Michael Greenberg, reflected on his daughter's mental difficulties, including the heavy medication, her frustration, and waiting for her diagnosis - along with the manifestation of bipolar 1 (unusual before the teen years have ended). Greenberg loves his daughter, hates her actions, looks at how she affects everyone around her. He, himself, is torn in a thousand directions, from his wife to his ex-wife, from a producer looking at his book to a landlord who wants Greenberg to read his attempt at writing. His wife has a deadline for her latest show. One of Greenberg's brothers suffers from mental illness, while his other brothers appear healthy. Anyone who loves a bipolar (or similarly affected) person has asked Why is s/he/I OK while I/he/she has this crippling affliction? The family meets, in the hospital ward, a Hasidic family, a University professor, and a woman so crippled by her illness that she can barely make it to the bathroom. These people share the ward, their families and peers do not. Why? we've asked. The writing of "Hurry Down Sunshine" is incredibly good and, at times, brilliant. When, for example, Greenberg recounts the murder of Sally's schoolmate by the girl's - Lisa Steinberg - father, he writes, "...Tevye's grandchildren are murdering their daughters." Cleverly told, often profound, "Hurry Down Sunshine" gives the reader a glimpse, however brief, of the life of a bipolar teenager AND that of her family. Page by page, medication tweak by medication tweak, we hope that Sally will "make it," but fear that she'll fatally crash. Until the end, you won't know, but you'll keep reading until you do.

Due to a recent diagnosis of a friend I ordered this book to understand bipolar disorder and this book will help readers cope with manic depression. But it is much more than a vivid description of mental illness. Hurry Down Sunshine is a compassionate and wise narrative by a gifted writer. The book contains a cast of deftly defined characters, including a brother with mental health issues, a supportive ex-wife, the new wife, as well as the afflicted daughter. These authentically rendered individuals give the narrative depth and free it from the plodding self-absorption that mars many memoirs. The book reads more like a novel and better than most fiction I've read recently. Once I started Hurry Down Sunshine I raced to finish it to its complex, powerful, yet satisfying ending.

Greenberg. Michael. "Hurry Down Sunshine", Other Press, 2008. A Powerful Memoir Amos Lassen Michael Greenberg's "Hurry Down Sunshine" is the story of one summer when "Times Literary Supplement" columnist's fifteen year old daughter was suddenly struck mad. Sally Greenberg had been diagnosed as bipolar and she had all of the classic symptoms of the disease. During the 4th of July weekend of 1996 she suddenly ended up in an episode of severe mental psychosis. She was hospitalized for 24 days and then she went into remission for a four month period. The majority of the book is about the hospitalization and while writing about it, Greenberg brings in quite a cast of characters which gives us a gallery of unforgettable portraits. We watch as an ordinary day for a fifteen year old girl turned tragic. Strange thoughts came into Sally's mind and she felt she had to relate them to others. As she accosted people on the streets of Greenwich Village, she began to receive a great deal of attention and she was eventually picked up by the police and taken home. Her father wrote the book so that we can see how this affected the experiences of the Greenberg family. Greenberg conveniently divides the book into three sections; part one covers the day, July 5 when Sally lost control and was taken to the hospital, part two is about the stay of two dozen days in the hospital and part three discusses her release and out-patient treatment. Greenberg also brings in literary characters that had daughters that were mentally ill and those that suffered themselves with a mania (James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Lowell). But more than all else he shows how mental illness affected him and his family. This is a rewarding read and I knew almost nothing about people who are bi-polar before reading feel like I really learned something.

Hurry Down Sunshine, by Michael Greenberg, is right up my alley. I am a nurse working with geriatric psyche patients, and I love a good memoir. The story is about Sally, the author's fifteen year old daughter. Diagnosed as Bipolar, she exhibited classic symptoms of the disease, albeit at a younger age than most. I read this book in a matter of hours, engrossed in the story from beginning to end. The author's extended family adds a cast of colorful characters to the story also. (I found the plight of the authors brother as captivating as Sally's saga...) This could have been a story about the hopelessness of psyche patients and the ineptness of psychiatrists, therapists and others inevitably encountered when one reluctantly enters a mental health facility, but it wasn't that at all. The Greenberg's were lucky to find a doctor who used both therapy and pharmacology to treat their daughter's disease, and a positive outcome was had. The author went to unusual lengths himself to learn more about the drugs his daughter was prescribed, and you have to applaud him for that also. I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Bipolar Disorder, or someone looking for a good weekend read.