Monday, July 02, 2012

The 2012 Summer Reading Spectacular #2

With a lot of new reading on the go, I only finished one book today.

Darryl Cunningham's Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness is a series of short anecdotal chapters based on the author's experiences working in the mental health field.  Part case study, part information, the book aims to break down the stigma associated with mental illness.  Its matter-of-fact tone is reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi's works (the author, in his introduction, credits Persepolis with inspiring him to use the graphic form to say what he wanted to say), as does its autobiographical content.  Though not the storyteller that Satrapi is, the understated tone and structure of the book somehow work reasonably well.  The chapters do not necessarily strive for a complete narrative arc, but rather act to highlight a particular truth in a nugget-like form.

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