Heavy Light

Heavy Light is a record of the bravest, most perilous, most intrepid journey that any human being can ever make. It is stricken, moving, urgent, crucial, and deserves to -- and, I don't doubt, will -- stand alongside such classics of the genre as Solomon's Noonday Demon, Leader's What is Madness?, even Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. A luminous, beautiful achievement

Niall Griffiths

An extraordinary book: deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful. It travels hard country: mania, paranoia, the huge collateral damage of madness. It shows its readers, unforgettably, what it is like to see the world on a "skewed plane". But the star by which it steers is, in the end and above all, love. This book confirms that Horatio Clare is among the most brilliant and compassionate writers of non-fiction I know

Robert Macfarlane

Horatio Clare, whose adventures in the Black Mountains, the Gulf of Bothnia, the Ethiopian Highlands, and the point in the Pacific Ocean furthest on earth from land, have made him one of the most brilliant travel writers of our day, takes us us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth, and humanity, that, better acquainted with its terrors, we may better face our own

Reverend Richard Coles

Clare takes us inside his head in this profound, compelling account of acute mental illness, which is also a love letter to those who cared for and supported him. And as he recovers, Heavy Light turns into a heartfelt quest to understand what happened to him, and how we can heal those similarly afflicted. This book must have been terribly hard to write, but it feels so important he's done so

Caroline Sanderson, Bookseller (Book of the Month)

I tore through Heavy Light, and haven't been able to stop thinking about it

Amy Liptrot

A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better, that forensically tracks the footprints of both journeys towards a settlement with the self

Jeanette Winterson

A fearless dive into the darks of the mind -- fiercely moving, ruthlessly honest and written with an exquisite care. It is a call for understanding that we all need to hear

Tom Bullough