Suicide Books

Simply a breathtaking story beautifully narrated--a page-turner. Throughout the book the writer painted a striking portrait with words that tickled the mind's eye. The scenes were detailed in description I felt as though I was transported back to that era. This book would make an entertaining movie.

I would definitely recommend this book - very entertaining.

It is very,very hard to put this book down at any moment once you've started reading it. This is a truly inspiring story and the suspense makes you want to quickly turn to the next page. It shows that no matter the situation, love will always conquer all.

Horane Smith has written a true love story where love triumphs,through harsh plantation life.I could not put the book down.Even in the worst of situations,love prevails.

This book is beautifully written, and the author's gift of story-telling draws pictures in your mind that take you personally to the time and place of each encounter described in his life. Honestly and intimately written, this book shows the author's heart and soul. I highly recommend this book and look forward to the author's second offering!

Howard Freemen has shared everything about his life with emotion, wit and charm - this is a must read for young people and adults who find themselves on "the brink".

I laughed and I cried and throughly enjoyed this book. Each essay is wonderfully written and very insightful. Howard Freeman is a very talented writer and I could really relate to his style and his stories. Great wit. I highly recommend this book.

this is an amazing book about our art world. Two big personalities clashing, outspoken women going down, an important voice lost.

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-born girl who moved to Iowa in the early 1960's as part of "Operation Peter Pan", a relocation program for Cuban children. First she was placed with her sister in an orphanage in Dubuque, before finally reuniting with her family in Cedar Rapids.

The Cuban girl Mendieta grew into a beautiful woman who began expressing herself in performance art and sculpture with themes relating to the practice of Santeria, blood, earth, birth and death within the contexts of primitive Hispanic symbolism. In short, she was brilliant. However, she had a predisposition to form relationships with her artistic mentors. One of these was Carl Andre, an established minimalist sculptor that Mendieta married, using him as a bridge to join the New York art establishment. Mendieta eventually became disenchanted with the bearded Andre, a rather odd and stilted personality, perpetually clad in Grant Wood-style overalls. She made plans for a divorce, but tragically died in a fall from the thirty-fourth floor New York apartment of Andre.

A trial ensued, in which most of the New York art establishment remained in solidarity with Andre, even though the alibi that he offered--that Mendieta committed suicide in a fit of jealousy--lacked plausibility. There simply was not enough evidence for the judge (Andre opted to forego a jury trial) to convict, and so justice was denied for yet another woman who lacked the power given her male counterpart.

This is a fascinating story that could have been told in a better form--this book has a fractured format which hacks up Mendieta's life and death instead of presenting it logically. But, as the best book available on the subject, it deserves your attention.

This is a fascinating account of the life, and untimely death, of the gifted Cuban artist Ana Mendieta. The writer, Robert Katz says, I have "sought to narrate these events as they were revealed to me, certainly not chronologically or in any other 'logical' way." In spite of the odd sequence in the recounting of events it is a riveting read. Ana Mendieta was lovely, free-spirited, magnetic, and a rising star in the art world. Her tragic fall from a NYC highrise is a great, and enduring loss to the world. Carl Andre is depicted as a complicated, proud, eccentric individual. He had fatal flaws in his character, and at the time of Ana's death his star was descending. Nevertheless, he was an iconic figure who was defended, and protected, by his powerful and wealthy friends in the art world. A burning question remains, did Andre get away with murder?

Really intriguing book, formulaic romance with a twist.

Morrisey and Charlene meet at the cemetery, one there to visit her son, one to visit her father. Morrisey's little son Gareth is the spitting image of Charlene's dead son JP which sparks Charlene's curiosity.

I don't want to give away what connects the two women, but their romance is an unlikely one. Yet, it works. Not only for them but for me as a reader. The two main characters truly come alive between the pages, and some of the secondary characters do as well.

Towards the end the author lost me a bit with further twists and turns, I'm not sure all of those were necessary. I have my usual gripe with this book in that it seems to stop in the middle of the story. Once more, I was fully expecting it to continue when I turned the page. While things aren't exactly unresolved, they are not dealt with fully, as in we don't see the impact the last plot developments have on Charlene and Morrisey. I think that would have been interesting to read.

Based on the book's blurb on the story plotline i was expecting something like mother gave birth to twins and the second baby was kidnapped without the mother's knowledge. The crime is discovered when the mother sets out in search of the truth and along the way falls in love with the "false" mother.

Boy was i wrong. The book is not about that...it is a romance novel but not your typical romance. The main characters are indeed an odd couple and the book is a good read. No obvious plot foreshadowing or grammar issues that throws the reader off their rhythm. Overall, impression of the book is one of good writing and strong plotlines. I only had one small minor issue where i got confused whose point of view was being presented. character one, character two or the narrator. This confusion only happened on one paragraph out of the whole book. Despite that i still recommend getting this book and reading it.

Sad, funny, sweet, and harsh all rolled into one book. The characters slowly unravel to reveal secrets that would intertwine them more than expected. A sweet little boy in the middle of it all, connecting two women in ways more than romance and love. Gareth, the young boy, easily tunes into things around him and his unfiltered curiosity forces his mom, Morrisey, to come to terms with her own past, present, and future. What seems, on the surface, to be a normal single mom raising her wonderful son, we soon find to be anything but simple. Her new love, Charlene, finds that her own life is not what she thought it was.

A true page-turner, The Odd Couple made me laugh, empathize, shake my head in disgust, and say "AWWWWW". The plot offers many mysteries, as well as building anticipation during what seem to be unforgiving circumstances. Lots of shocking and ah-ha moments, as well as surprising events divulged. The author presents well-developed characters who are believable, realistic, down-to -Earth, and who invoke many emotions. A very well-written and exciting first book for this new author!

It could be worse, like the hatchet job below that prompted me to write this. First things first: anyone who is pretentious/affectatious enough to quote Nietzsche solely in his original German- a quote that is all the more obscure for its reference to 'Seneca and his ilk,' (the title) and its borrowing of a Latin coin of phrase- has already demonstrated his bad faith. I'm talking about the next reviewer. You see; he's not assuming that you will posses a working knowledge of German so that you will catch his all-too-coy reference. He simply wants to intimidate you with his high and mighty linguistic flourishes. "I CAN QUOTE NIETZSCHE IN THE ORIGINAL AREN"T I SO FRIKKIN SMART NOW YOU HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY INTELLECTUAL OPINIONS!!! He seems to scream.

He comes not to discuss but to brag and condescend- he doesn't give an accurate rendering of Amery's book, he merely reveals the depths of his own extremely beknighted 'Weltanshaaung.' Here is the translation of said piece, from "The Joyful Science," (a wonderful book and one deserving of a better reader) It is the 34th song,

"They write and write their intolerably sagacious Larifari,
As if it 'gaelt primum scribere,
Deinde philosophari.' (meaning 'first to write then to philosophize.')

IMHO, the statement applies far more readily to the reviewer employing it than the book he reviews. Yes, Amery attempted suicide before writing this and then ended up succeeding some time after. Yes, Amery does employ a pseudo-existentialist vocabulary in order to make sense of his predicament. But he has no pretense that he speaks for mankind. He simply dislikes the various ways in which society seeks to make sense/marginalize/cure the phenomenon of suicide, and he espouses a different tact, in understanding it. He believes that the act is one a person can approach and commit with dignity and clear-mindedness. Make what you will of that. It calls to mind the opening chapter of Camus, "The Myth of Sisyphus," which is, at heart, another mediation on suicide, albeit from a different perspective again.

His suicide in no means destroys or stains his observations and ideas. I have all three of Amery's books, and I unhesitatingly recommend each one. I'm not planning on killing myself, and my feelings on the subject are ambivalent. Still, I find J. Amery to be refreshingly clear, immediate and concise. He avoids jargoneering and tendentiousness, and never stoops to pathos. He writes in a persuasive and at times subtly humorous fashion. He isn't trying to get the world to kill itself en masse, and he's not trying to get your child to put its head in an oven. He simply wants to discuss and examine, as objectively as possible (though he admits that it is not) the idea that life (under certain conditions) may not be worth living. This is one of the few books on suicide that actually had a great deal of profundity. Worth the read.

The third reviewer is also spot-on... I would also recommend A. Alvarez' "The Savage God," for a book that seeks to confront artistic self-destruction, among other things. "In Darkness," by James A. Wechsler is another book that approaches the phenomena from a familial point of view.

There are other options, other possibilities. If you like this book, you will probably like the poetry of Sylvia Plath (I do) - although defined by her suicide attempts and her final "success" - it has meant that Plath's work has been mostly "defined" by her actions, rather than letting the work define itself - so this has limited the potential reading of her work and has limited the reader's perspectives of it , which is a real shame. If all roads lead to loss of life through choice, then you have not looked at other routes. I would urge readers to look at this as just an intellectual debate, rather than as a self justification for self-annihilation/destruction. Suicide is selfish, no matter how you dress it up. It is the ultimate selfish act. There is always hope, it is just sometimes very hard to see - something worth remembering when reading this book. Life is a choice and it is hard work - but there are benefits longer term. Don't give up, you are needed here - you might not really believe it but you are. You have yet more to achieve.

Finding myself an unwilling survivor of suicide in 1991, I resigned myself to making a more strenuous effort. At the same time, I began a rigorous study of the literature of suicide in order to gain some understanding of what I found happening to me. The situation was simply bizarre beyond words.

Subsequently, I have plowed through mountains of "expert" opinion and sampled all the various available treatments with the unavoidable conclusion that no one can help me understand what is happening. And I really ought to finish my suicide before madness incapacitates me. The urgency is extreme.

Here the author at least exposes the missteps of psychotherapy with regard to suicide in such a frank and compassionate way that I finally have some semblance of hope that I can make my peace with the problem. Here is a human who has thrust himself beyond the edge of life and was involuntarily thrust back into it. So he knows what he's talking about. And his manner of discussion is so soothing and articulate and artistic that it reintroduces some dignity into my own life that has been cast aside, even by myself, as a horrific failure. Yes, dignity at least appears to become resurrected as a possibility to me now.

And the friendly talk here is infinitely satisfying on so many different intimately personal levels. The author's experience is one that comforts by way of confirming the unspeakable fact that we who long to die are NOT really mad. We would not REALLY want to die if the world were really a sane place. And he scratches a possibility of hope onto the surface of the world that says--Let those of us who know this feeling reach out in sane comfort to each other. No particular way...just some way. Not much sanity...just a little...just enough to get by on.

And that's precisely what I'm doing with this review. I am bearing witness that this man knows how suicide feels...so that his words have substance and profound depth and comfort.

Political enthusiasts in particular should enjoy this Robert Barnard mystery, in which a shrewd superintendent inquires into the death of James Partridge, a quiet, well-mannered Tory, who, before his untimely demise, represented East Bootham, Yorkshire, in the House of Commons. Was it murder or suicide? Are Partridge's family and friends grieving, or moving on with their lives with suspicious quickness? Did any of his potential successors -- or their contributors -- benefit disproportionately from Partridge's death? Barnard's book smoothly resolves these questions even as it gives the reader the unique flavor of a parliamentary by-election. Worth reading.

This Barnard mystery is so entertainingly wry and such a page-by-page pleasure that the murder and the whodunit are almost incidental to the telling. In this one Barnard skewers the British polictical system top to bottom -- from opportunistic PM to dim-witted voter -- without resorting to forensic clues or Holmesian detection or red herrings. It probably helps to be something of an anglophile and more than a little cynical to get the most of Barnard's insights and deft verbal political cartooning.

Many of Robert Barnard's books are satire. It is such a trick to not go too far when writing satire, and I have yet to observe him putting a foot wrong. This somewhat elderly book is no exception.

Somewhat elderly, because it was first published in 1986, a lifetime and a half ago, when it comes to politics, in Britain--or the US! None of the higher-ups are named in this book, so it's a safe read, anyway, except for the damage you may do to yourself by laughing too hard!

The Tory MP for East Bootham (a dreary little place that is a casualty of the economic wars and located in far Yorkshire) James Partridge by name, has apparently committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Thames. Or did he?

Mixing the events taking place behind the scenes leading up to the new by-election for Partridge's replacement with the very subtle investigation of his death by the about-to-be-retired Superintendant Sutcliffe of the London Police, allows the reader to see many sides of what could be a one-dimensional picture. There is also, of course, the ever present media, digging ever deeper into backgrounds and foregrounds.

In the end, the Superintendant solves the puzzle, which will leave you chuckling as you finish the tale, even though justice is probably not well-served. But then, this IS about politics. Remember?

Losing a pet is never easy, but remembering a pet can help. I think this book will help.

author of "Hobo Finds A Home"

The scrapbook is a really neat feature. The commentary on pages 10 and 11 called "For this important time" which states things like sending a note to school and things like that when the pet dies is also very well written.

The mom's story about the cat dying "in her sleep" bothered me (and contradicted text about not using sleep references on pages 10 and 11). Miss Bertie discusses how someone poisoned her dog when she was 15 and she talked about an old dog who died and then the very old (90)owner died the next day. I think those items could be a little confusing to a young child. As I said though, the epilogue and the scrapbook are WONDERFUL.

It's a beautiful book and it helped both me and my children when our dog had to be put down. It's precious and it's helpful. You know you're not alone when you read Rafferty.

Allison Pollack Alexander has a unique and powerful voice. Her premise is strong, her story rich in plot. But due to what appears to be extremely light editing, the story loses a lot. I believe Return To Suicide would make an excellent screenplay, the dialogue sizzles and there are many very strong scenes.

With simple dialog and stark passages reminiscent of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Ms. Alexander takes us into Addie Myers' life. Neither story nor setting is pretty, but somehow this reader was enriched by the telling.

Addie Myers is a scrawny ten year old orphan, dumped off on a brutish uncle in the early years of the dust bowl and depression. Uncle Ira offers no creature comforts, no hope, and very little food to keep an unloved child alive. And the good folks of Suicide Oklahoma prefer not to get involved. Staunch Christian souls that they are, they know Addie's history and that her future will no doubt be as suspect as her past. The hand of friendship is extended only by Miss Eleanor at the general store, and an awkward boy named Tom.

What little hope Tom has for a promising life away from Suicide is shattered in his youth. And Addie lives a bare existence, trying to stay out of her loutish uncle's reach as she comes of age. With nowhere to go and no one to guide or protect her, Addie silently seeks acceptance in the fields, birds, and animals, the prairie winds and skies.

Spare blessings come in the form of Tom's love for a wild girl and her blossoming to the only tenderness she's ever known. Not even the revelation of dark secrets or the shocking end of Return to Suicide negates the sweetness Tom and Addie share for a brief time. I congratulate the author for making this story work, for bringing a sense of beauty out of hopelessness and dust.

Allison Alexander's novella Return to Suicide is a hauntingly beautiful piece of literature. So many things work together in these 100+ pages of natural writing. It is the stuff of classics. Alexander tells a tale so tragically poignant it begs an emotional reaction from its reader; and certainly gets one. I actually burst into tears at one point. The author has written a story about the "unwanted" and the "searching" that is set in the Great Depression. Return to Suicide is reader friendly and yet has a sophisticated style. I will be affected for quite some time by this amazing book. Author Alexander's future in writing is one to keep track of. She is enormously talented.

This was a very interesting read for me as I am fascinated endlessly by the exploration of gender roles and its many iterations and changes.

Many observations made here do seem acute, such as the fact that young men without proper male role models and guidance from them will have greater difficulty adjusting to civil society, seeking instead the companionship of other lost boys who perpetuate an immature attitude towards women, marriage, and adult responsibility. I believe this is a very germane topic to today's young men.

However, I found some of the conclusions to be had in this book to be somewhat laughable. For instance, it seems to imply that allowing women to "infiltrate" the workplace (the MAN'S domain) will naturally make men feel threatened. The implication made is not that men should endeavor to see past biological gender and view women as equals in the workplace, but that women should stick with teaching or secretarial work... or better yet, get barefoot and back in the kitchen, leaving men their respite in the workplace as a Boys-Only Club.

Nevermind the conclusion one could reach after reading about the natural way of men as providers and women as receivers. If women were to return to the "natural" way, they would always be subject to the men they marry. Yes, some husbands would do a fabulous job with this - but not all. I refuse to accept that this "natural" way is best when it practically FORCES one individual to rely on another for survival.

The impression I got from some of the writing was even patronizing towards women to an extent, lauding woman's natural sensuality and her ability to bring forth and nurture new life - as if to say "You women are so amazing, so great, and men can be such savages and are so petty - just let the babies (men) have their bottle (world) and we'll all get along just fine."

Certainly an interesting snapshot of the sexual revolution and its ramifications at the time and for the future, but certainly NOT the final word on "the way it should be" between women and men in society.

The Sexual Revolution is now complete - anything and everything is looked upon as normal and there are very few inhibitions, if any at all. Thirty-three years ago Gilder tried to show us why we were embarking on a suicidal mission, but we didn't receive his message very well, did we?

His most essential premise is that men and women are different, not only sexually and physically, but emotionally and even intellectually. The second important point he makes is that women are not inferior to men, and in fact are superior in sexual matters for the simple reason that they are constructed physically and emotionally to handle the new lives that result from sexual unions, whereas men lack the rudimentary necessities for doing so. This idea contrasts sharply with the feminist assertions that men consider women inferior and treat them that way. Gilder doesn't have anything very favorable to say about the feminist movement, which he feels is, in large part, responsible for the present-day attitudes about sexual relationships between men and women.

The author is an advocate of strong families, which has ALWAYS been the cornerstone of a strong society, and he reasons that the breakdown of heretofore normal sexual relationships is leading to the breakdown of families. Sure enough, 33 years later we can see just how badly the family structure is breaking down, and it is not hard to imagine the almost total demise of the family.

Gilder makes so many good points in his analysis that it is hard to zero in on which are the most important, but one such point that needs and deserves comment is the one on gender roles. Our society has come to accept the idea that women can do anything that men can do, and do it as well or even better than men, and Gilder acknowledges that in many instances this is true. But he argues that if men do not have roles in society that are for the most part exclusive to them, and women likewise are not gender-identifiable (for the most part), the man is psychologically compelled to act out his masculinity in other ways, and the relationship he has with women is altered, and the alteration is not for the better. Men will come to feel that they are no longer needed, and radical feminism bolsters this idea. He concludes that gender roles are necessary to stabilize society, and if we don't have them, we surely will have destabilization.

There is so much good material in this book that it should be required reading for all psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage counselors, priests, ministers, rabbis, and anyone else giving advice on sexual matters. I should think that we'd be delighted if we could avoid the path to sexual suicide. To that end, I highly recommend reading this book.

I bought and read "Sexual Suicide" when it was out in the 1970's. It was an eye-opener, reminescent of Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" [...]. Since he has written a new book (1992) called "Men and Marriage," (which I confess I have not yet read,) that might be a more up-to-date statement of the consequences of the sexual revolution than is his 1973 writing.

The value of the 1973 writing is still great, partly because it demonstrates that before the sexual revolution had "won" our society, a thoughtful sociologist could predict accurately what would be the consequences of women giving men the opportunity to sexually use them outside of marriage:

1. One MAJOR reason males married was to have a sex life. Post-Sexual Revolution, marriage becomes unnecessary to have sex,

2. so women find it difficult to find men to marry. They become increasingly willing to settle for a live-in boyfriend or a series of one-night stands.

3. The live-in boyfriend is far more likely to sexually or physically abuse his girlfriend's children than would be their own father. (The emotional and physical consequences of this abuse are immense.)

3. Children born to single mothers must either be given up in adoption (which is now rarely done), or the mother must try to go it alone financially. Especially if the mother is not through school, she will have great difficulty getting enough education to make an adequate income. She and her children often live in poverty.

4. Poverty often means attending sub-adequate school systems, and see undesirable examples of choices in the neighborhood around them.

5. Because young males need not take responsibility for their offspring and the women whom they sexually use, they fail to develop the sense of responsibility of the married. I.e., they drive less sanely than does the man with a wife and child in the car with him. They take risks that they believe will "only hurt themselves." They live for themselves, or for the gang. (Have you noticed the different rates on insurance for the married vs. single men? Insurance companies have reasons for their rates!)

6. As a result, young males are more likely to end up in prison or dead, especially if the person in question has had no father in HIS home of origin, either.

7. Prisons explode at the seams, and the whole of society pays, with increased crime, and increased expenses of police, courts, prisons, etc.

And THIS was published in 1973! If you are less than perhaps 50 years of age, you likely don't remember a time before sex outside of marriage became the social norm. I was born in 1951: I've watched as Gilder's words have become so, so true.

The only reason I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars is that, in its frank wording about sexuality, when my young hormones were raging, I used to have real problems controlling my thought life! This may or may not be a problem [...].

I read this book seven months after my own son died from a drug overdose. Before obtaining a copy of Dr. Chance's book I read many others on death of a child and survival. None adequetly touched the topic of the children who died of suicide and rarely mentioned death by drugs. It was almost like the parents were being blamed or that our grief was any less than those of a parent whose child died of a tragic accident or unfortunate illness. As I read the author's words I could feel the pain. The books I read previous did not touch me in that emotional way. I was glad a friend of mine suggested I read this story. I got the feeling that her life was filled with many tragic and painful issues, but I found her to stay focused on the reason she wrote the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who is experiening such a tragic loss.

After recently losing my sister to suicide, I signed up for a support group called SOS (Survivers of Suicide). They sent me this book to read. My heart went out to this mother and her grief. She addresses all the questions you have in your mind after you expierience death by suicide, but you are afraid to say them out loud. She explains how your feelings are normal and there is no right or wrong way to act. Sue Chance has allowed me to put some of my anger and grief into percpective. This book has given me the strength to continue on without my sister.

When I was putting together my anthology, DYING: A BOOK OF COMFORT, this was one of two books I found particularly helpful (and used selections from). I'm sorry to see that Victoria Alexander's book WORDS I NEVER THOUGHT TO SPEAK; STORIES OF LIFE IN THE WAKE OF SUICIDE is not in print now, although another of her books is, but Sue Chance's book is definitely something to consider, if someone you know is dealing with the emotional problems of surviving the suicide of someone close to them