Scattershot

“Lovelace’s poetic prose is both matter-of-fact and haunted, capturing the unpredictable rhythms of mental illness: ‘Alone in the bathroom I made a smile in the mirror and it strangled my eyes.’ Readers will get a real sense of the interior world of a single patient, and a family, on the verge of a mental breakdown.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[Lovelace’s] book’s major strength is its language, which beautifully mimics his bipolarity. When Lovelace chronicles a manic episode, the prose comes in breathless, eloquent bursts; when he describes crushing depression, it’s as though all the air is being sucked out of the room.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Poet and bookseller Lovelace’s humorous and harrowing first memoir follows his gentle, loving mother’s, his eccentric preacher father’s, his younger brother’s, and his own descent into bipolar disorder. It’s a coming-of-age story of an entire family; how parents and siblings are affected by both their own and each other’s bipolarity. Marked by otherness simply by being the evangelical preacher’s son, Lovelace also had to cope with his role as the family’s caretaker, which he managed with grace even though he grew up with only marginal stability. No one in the family lacks love for one another, and that’s what makes this story so poignant.”—Elizabeth Brinkley, School Library Journal