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Author Marya Hornbacher to discuss Madness: A Bipolar Life

By Mara Fink '11
April 25, 2008

Minnesota author Marya Hornbacher will read and discuss her new book, Madness: a Bipolar Life, at St. Olaf College Wednesday, April 30, at 7 p.m. in the Kings' Dining Room of Buntrock Commons. Following the discussion she also will be available for a book signing.

HornbacherBook
Hornbacher's new book describes her battle with bipolar disorder, which remained misdiagnosed by doctors until she was 23. Madness depicts her struggle to cope with a disease that has afflicted her with extreme mood swings and led to self mutilation and eating disorders, among other problems.

Hornbacher has Type I rapid-cycle bipolar, which she recently told People Magazine causes "major mood swings, all day long. Drugs help, but I consider it a good year if I'm only hospitalized once."

However, despite the dark topic, reviewer Brigitte Frase of the Star Tribune says, "What ought to be a thoroughly depressing memoir is anything but. In staccato bursts of present tense she makes us inhabit her brain and experience the extremes of her highs and lows, which are not mood swing as much as all-engulfing tsunami waves."

Hornbacher also uses humor to deal with the one of hardest aspects of the disease -- madness, or the hypermanic state. "Most of the manic scenes -- or at least those she recalls -- are rendered in a tone of surreal high hilarity, like a demented Saturday Night Live skit on steroids," Frase says.

Hornbacher is also the author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, which received a 1998 Pulitzer Prize nomination and sold more than one million copies in the United States.

Madness: A Bipolar Life will be on sale at a 15 percent discount in the St. Olaf Bookstore throughout the entire week of the event.

Contact Ruth Block at 507-786-3048 or block@stolaf.edu.