Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother’s Love

Amazon.com Price: $4.18 (as of 10/10/2019 21:01 PST- Details)

Description

“Glorious…probably the most best memoirs I’ve read in years…a tragicomic gem about circle of relatives, class, race, justice, and the spectacular weirdness of Wichita. [McDermott] can move from barely controlled hilarity to the brink of rage to aching tenderness in a single breath.”
–Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Book Review

Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he used to be being filmed, Truman Show-style, as a part of an audition for a TV pilot. Each passerby used to be an actor; Each car would magically stop for him; everything he saw used to be a cue from “The Producer” to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, used to be arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.

So begins the story of Zack’s freefall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, frequently hilarious struggle to claw his as far back as sanity. It is a journey so that you can take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who may be able to save him, his tough, big-hearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack’s dark world.

Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy Seal and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird’s help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a partner who can love him back, bipolar and all.

Introducing an electrifying new voice, GORILLA AND THE BIRD is a raw and unforgettable account of a young man’s unraveling and the relationship that saves him.

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