Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Your Voice in My Head
    Unavailable
    Your Voice in My Head
    Unavailable
    Your Voice in My Head
    Ebook205 pages3 hours

    Your Voice in My Head

    By Emma Forrest

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    _______________

    'It's difficult to write a convincing tale of depression that's also an entertaining romp, but Forrest has done it' - Sunday Times

    'An incredibly gifted writer ... I can't remember the last time I ever read such a blistering, transfixing story of obsession, heartbreak and slow, stubborn healing' - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

    'Emma Forrest is as hilarious as she is wise ... touching, funny and very real' - Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

    'Heartfelt and touching and surprisingly funny. It's also wincingly, unflinchingly honest' - Florence Welch, Dazed & Confused
    _______________

    Emma Forrest, an English journalist, was twenty-two and living in America when she realised that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity.

    Lonely, in a dangerous cycle of self-harm and damaging relationships, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist - a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the vibrant and dangerous tide of herself, and who would help her to recover when she tried to end her life.

    Emma's loving and supportive family circled around her in panic. She was on the brink of drowning. But she was also still working, still exploring, still writing, and she had also fallen deeply in love. One day, when Emma called to make an appointment with her psychiatrist, she found no one there. He had died, shockingly, at the age of fifty-three, leaving behind a young family. Processing the premature death of a man who'd become her anchor after she'd turned up on his doorstep, she was adrift. And when her significant and all-consuming relationship also fell apart, she was forced to cling to the page for survival.

    A modern-day fairy tale of New York, Your Voice in My Head is a dazzling and devastating memoir, clear-eyed and shot through with wit. In a voice unlike any other, Emma Forrest explores breakdown and mania, but also the beauty of love - and the heartbreak of loss.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJan 17, 2011
    ISBN9781408817452
    Unavailable
    Your Voice in My Head
    Author

    Emma Forrest

    Emma Forrest has published three novels, an essay collection and the memoir Your Voice In My Head. An Anglo-American currently based in London, she recently wrote and directed her feature debut, Untogether. Her latest novel, Royals, is due out in 2019. @GirlInterrupter

    Read more from Emma Forrest

    Related to Your Voice in My Head

    Related ebooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Me, Myself, and You: Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

      Apr 15, 2019

      In her latest novel, Rooney suggests that individual identity is actually a microcosmic social structure, made up of webbed relationships and collective agreements. The post Me, Myself, and You: Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ appeared first on The Mi

      6 min read

    • Article

      Of The People

      May 19, 2019

      Of The People
      3 min read

    • Article

      Dolly Alderton On Giving Advice

      Oct 22, 2022

      I was at an all-time low when I decided I wanted to try to fix everyone else’s problems. My head was a mess and my heart was broken. It was one of those years where every month brought a new sadness – an annus horribilis, I think they call it. And, i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bottoming Out: On Leslie Jamison’s ‘The Recovering’

      Apr 9, 2018

      The first time she told the story of her recovery from alcohol addiction, Leslie Jamison recalls in her memoir The Recovering, an older man in the front row of the meeting where she was speaking started shouting: “This is boring!” Jamison is quick to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Cherie Jones

      Jan 7, 2021

      Cherie Jones
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mitski

      May 12, 2022

      Mitski
      7 min read

    • Article

      I Never Called Her Momma

      Sep 13, 2023

      I Never Called Her Momma
      39 min read

    • Article

      By Fiona Killackey

      Nov 1, 2017

      Forty-five minutes. That’s all it took for Mum to go from isto was. She was seemingly okay, packing books to read for what she assumed would be a long wait at the hospital (for a check-up, as she hadn’t been feeling well for twenty-four hours), and w

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Inherited Imagination

      Aug 18, 2020

      The Inherited Imagination
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Melissa Lozada-Oliva

      Dec 17, 2021

      I'm always on my way to writing or on my way to reading. These are the big loves of my life but I'm also interested in what pulls me away from them. The post A Year in Reading: Melissa Lozada-Oliva appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Big Grief

      Aug 27, 2023

      Big Grief
      3 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      Happy Endings

      Sep 1, 2023

      Happy Endings
      5 min read

    • Article

      Notes on Etiquette

      Mar 1, 2019

      Notes on Etiquette
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Your Voice in My Head

    3.5/5

    83 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      would recommend to anyone and everyone
    • 1/5
      Only a few chapters into this book I realized it was not a fit for me. Even though everyone else seems to love Forrest's writing style, I found it lackluster. Although I appreciate the immense effort authors put into their craft, I prefer when this effort is imperceivable. In Your Voice in My Head Forrest seems like she's trying too hard. A lot of the references to music, films, and NYC locales were lost on me as well, which made me skim through them and feel like a rube. All in all, just a poor reader-book fit.
    • 2/5
      People love this book, at least according to the back of the book jacket. While I am sure that Emma Forrest is a gifted writer, I could not connect at all with this memoir. Perhaps it is me - I've never really had to spend lots of time with people who were manic-depressive - and her particular brand of mental illness includes such weird (to me) allusions that I just didn't understand much of what was going on in her head. I also found it extremely sad that people actually have to live without hope - but as a person who finds my hope in Jesus Christ and his resurrection - maybe my inability to connect is to be expected.
    • 4/5
      Going into this book, I didn't quite know what to expect. I haven't read a feminist depression memoir since grad school and to be honest I wasn't too hopeful about Emma Forrest. The thing that saved this book for me was her very well crafted sentences and the uncontrived way that she linked her themes together. I could tell that Forrest spent a good deal of time working on individual sentences and it shows. Also, it helped knowing that "GH" was Colin Ferrell from the get go. I didn't really see this as a hindrance to the story telling, but I get why she left him nameless.I also related to the time period in which this is all going on 2000-2009. Looking at events like the George Bush elections, than the Barrack election through the eyes of a manic depressive/cutter/serial celebrity dater was interesting to me. Near the end I was sort of torn over what this book was really about. In other words, would I have enjoyed this equally if I didn't know GH was Colin Ferrell? Probably not. Why should I care about Emma Forrest's story? What makes her case of manic depression special? In the end, I believe its her writing skill. The book was a also a bit on the short side with a huge font and the chapter sizes are somewhat short. I certainly finished the book interested in her story though and she gave me a genuine sense of what it was like to be in her shoes. I will seek out other works by her.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book and wish it had never ended. It is one I possibly will buy just to be able to read it over and over again. The descriptions of the manic-depressive behaviors are sad but funny, as the author is able to use her wonderful descriptive way of writing to pull the reader in and feel the emotional upheaval that goes with this diagnosis.She doesn't name her beau, but I googled it and found out who it was that let her down so badly, and was amazed that this author was in the entertainment news for such a long time because of this romance. It was good to hear about life from her version of it rather than the gossip columns. I found myself laughing out loud, a rarity for me, in some places and yet sad for her when her beau dumps her. For an insight into Hollywood celebrities, and the behaviors of a writer who suffers from manic-depression, run out and buy this book. It is worth your time and your money.
    • 4/5
      A real life psychological journey told with some humour. Well written.
    • 5/5
      Emma forrest your awesome great job.i think this book will save many souls

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Your Voice in my Head is a candid, wrenching account of Forrest's descent into utter despair, self-mutilation, bulimia, and attempted suicide. She is young, a talented and successful writer, a London transplant living in New York; and she has realized that her "quirks had gone beyond eccentricity, past the warm waters of weird, to those cold, deep patches of sea where people lose their lives." (8) So begins her journey back to land. Thrown a lifeline by loving parents and an exceptional doctor of psychiatry, she grabs on; but her madness is not easily silenced.Ultimately, Forrest writes of life: great love, great dreams, great loss. Though her reality is scarred by depression and mania, she nonetheless writes with a sharp wit and is, by turns, even humourous. The continued appearance of water in her memoir is brilliant. "I feel the waters rising up around my heart. They don't stop. This is my last breath, this is my last heart. I'm searching frantically for an air pocket." (145)Ultimately, of course, only Emma can save herself. "Can I tell you what it's like to live inside Millais' painting of Ophelia? There are patches of water so warm. Drowning I can see the sky, the branches of trees hanging overhead. It's very beautiful. I will stay afloat for as long as I can." (202)Highly recommended to all who enjoy reading about the achievements and triumphs of real women. For anyone who has met depression face-to-face, Your Voice in My Head is not to be passed by.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Emma Forrest’s memoir is a gut-wrenching read. It is an homage to her deceased psychiatrist and an attempt at understanding the failed relationship with her unidentifiable movie-star lover, but most of all it describes her self-mutilation and suicide attempt. However, it is the chapter describing a Shabbat service that is most rewarding as it provides a breakthrough for the author while at the same time uplifts the reader. More than just a confessional, Your Voice in My Head explores the psychological depths of an examined life and that warrants our attention.