Fire On All Sides

The international bestseller 'Hysterical, harrowing, honest... I really loved this book' Jarvis Cocker 'A brilliant, jangling opus to Rhodes's frantic mind... I cannot write anything more affecting about Rhodes than he can write himself.' Katie Glass, Sunday Times 'Brave and unflinching... Excellent reading... [Rhodes] deserves an ovation for this courageous work.' Helen Davies, Sunday Times 'What [Rhodes] describes in Fire On All Sides, writing with the same passion and energy he has when talking, are less destructive, more life-enhancing avenues to cope with anxiety, depression and trauma that he has found effective... An earlier generation might have referred to Rhodes as a tortured genius and left it at that, but his life defies such casual, catch-all labels.' Daily Telegraph 'Rhodes writes like he plays - with power and intensity... Deeply stirring' Evening Standard For many of us who suffer from depression or anxiety, the simple act of endurance, of having to appear normal, is a daunting, painful and heroic task. Getting out of bed, packing the kids off to school, showing up for work, preparing dinner... These can be astonishing achievements when it sometimes takes a superhuman effort simply to stand upright. How do you keep going? How do you do what you do, day in, day out, conforming to people's idea of you and functioning in the way society expects you to, when all you want to do is disappear and hide? In Fire On All Sides, Rhodes attempts to find how to make the unbearable bearable in the most exposing circumstances imaginable. As he embarks on a gruelling five-month concert tour, performing in front of thousands of people, the tortuous voices in his mind his constant companions, he has no choice but to face these wild, mad ramblings head on. Luckily, there is the music. There is always the music. Bach, Chopin, Beethoven - they are his holy grail, his mechanism for survival. Just. This is an important, urgent book. It's about going through your day feeling like you can't find a way out of the crazy, it's about not setting the happiness bar too high, it's about accepting the messy imperfection that is life. Rhodes explodes the myths surrounding depression, anxiety and stress - the plagues of our society - into a million pieces, then sticks them back together again with his characteristic thought-provoking, laser sharp and humorous style. The really good news? It's going to be OK. Just.

A dazzlingly original memoir, Paper Cuts takes us inside the mind of a young Oxford academic devastated by severe mental illness. ‘I have a small line of red dots on the back of my left hand, where the needle goes in. I have had hundreds of ketamine injections, more than anyone else, perhaps. The needle goes in, and the truth comes out. Sometimes I am a child again. Sometimes I have the innocence of a child, but I am not innocent. I know too much. I have known too much.’ With Paper Cuts, Stephen Bernard boldly lives through the trauma of childhood abuse and mental illness. He writes to escape and confront, to accuse and explain. Each morning when he wakes, Stephen Bernard must reconstruct his self: every night he writes himself a letter to be read the next day. The fractured, intensely personal narrative of Paper Cuts follows a single day in his life as he navigates a course through the effects of mania, medication and memories. ‘Beautifully written... Brilliant’ Henry Marsh ‘Distinguished and desolating... The saving grace is the writer’s undaunted eye for the beauty of the world’ Hilary Mantel ‘Chilling, riveting, extraordinary, wonderful’ Roddy Doyle ‘It is an extraordinary book in its unblinking truthfulness’ Hannah Jane Parkinson, Observer