Mind on Fire
Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019
- Published: 15 June 2019
- ISBN: 9781844884308
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 224
Mind on Fire is a truly powerful, arresting, haunting account. Arnold Thomas Fanning has reckoned with the darkest matter of his heart and mind, and I challenge anyone not to be moved by that.
Sara Baume
In this strange and singular book, Arnold Thomas Fanning mercilessly excavates the infernal underworld of his own years of madness. As reminiscent as it occasionally is of John Healy's The Grass Arena, and even of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, the book is ultimately not quite like anything else I've read, and brought me as close to the lived reality of mental illness as I have ever been. It's a significant achievement: a painful, inexorable work of autobiography, whose existence is its own form of redemption.
Mark O'Connell
[A] painfully intense, courageous and gripping account of [Fanning's] journey to the underworld of madness and back. This is a brave and instructive book.
Irish Times
Extraordinary. An account of mental illness, grief, delusions, homelessness, a fractured family relationship ... and all while trying to recover and create. Superb writing on a frequently difficult subject.
Sinéad Gleeson
A spellbinding memoir that should prove both moving and hopefully cathartic for the reader
RTÉ Culture
This is an extraordinary memoir about how it feels to be depressed, delusional, desperate
Observer
Told in tight and immediate first-person, and imbued with a startling momentum that ratchets unnervingly, Fanning's publishing debut ... is a significant achievement and should be a talking point in publishing this year
Irish Independent
Fanning's debut book lays it on the line in a deeply personal and compelling chronicle of his descent into depression and his way back out.
RTE Guide
Unsparingly direct, searing and honest ... It is gripping to read and must have been exhausting to live
Prof Brendan Kelly, Medical Independent
One of the most gripping and revealing memoirs I've read in a long time. A controlled and artful exploration of absolute loss of control, an unsettling and at times very moving reconstruction of a period of serious mental illness, Mind on Fire is a beautiful book about a terrifying thing.
Mark O'Connell, Irish Times Books of the Year
Gripping
Sinéad Gleeson, Irish Times Books of the Year
Wonderful
Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times Books of the Year
Shocking
Liz Nugent, Irish Times Books of the Year
A ratcheting pace, a tight first-person immediacy, and utterly staggering to be a passenger over its entire warped course ... An indelible, ground-shaking account
Hilary A White, Irish Independent, Memoir of the Year, Best Reads of 2018
Poignant, beautifully detailed memoir
Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times, Best Debuts of 2018
Brave and illuminating
Sunday Business Post
Incredibly important
Emilie Pine, author of Notes to Self
Arnold Thomas Fanning offers the most vivid and unflinching window into the mind of someone who is in the throes of madness ... It was like nothing I'd read before
Rick Edwards