Book 36: Down Came the Rain by Brooke Shields

I’ve been putting off writing this for a few days now for multiple reasons, but mostly because I’m torn between the importance of the subject matter and how much I didn’t actually like this book. Postpartum depression is a scary common mental health issue that still has a stigma attached to it, like most mental health disorders. For some reason mental health disorders are synonymous to weakness, incapability, legit insanity, but in reality most of the time it’s the complete opposite. If you wake up and have to deal with what essentially feels like your mind and body betraying you, you find a way to tap into a strength and determination you didn’t even know you had. When the general public thinks of PPD they tend to think of women who end up killing their babies, but just like the bipolar man who drives 90 some mph in a residential area killing someone in another car because he thinks he is piloting an airplane, these are very rare extremes. Women need to stopped being shamed for PPD. A dialog needs to happen between women, and everyone, so when someone we know is experiencing postpartum depression we as a society can band together and give her the support and resources needed to get through it all. 

Now on to the book, Down Came the Rain by Brooke Shields. I wanted so much from this book and it sadly fell very short. Most of my issues with this book stem from the fact that Brooke Shields isn’t a good writer. Sometimes you can overlook subpar writing if the underlying story they have to tell is compelling or the author is just so god damn likable, but Brooke Shields just really portrayed herself as really whiny celebrity. She also spent a lot of time talking in circles without really getting any point across other than the baseline factual things that happened each day. Instead of the overall message of the book being “this can happen to anyone including me”, it seemed to be “how could this happen to me of all people, don’t you know who I am”. Yes she is famous but that really has nothing to do with her PPD story, it felt like way to much emphasis was continually put on her fame which just made her unlikable and hard to sympathize with. Perhaps I put to much hope in this book, which is only my fault, but as a woman with bipolar, who knows statistically just how likely I am to get postpartum depression, I really wanted a woman in the public eye to be able to give a voice to all those women who had their voices taken away through postpartum depression shaming. 

http://www.amazon.com/Down-Came-Rain-Postpartum-Depression/dp/1401308465/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1446484432&sr=1-1&keywords=down+came+the+rain

Book 7: All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

This is a new young adult book which I almost bought, but then decided against it, and then saw it at the library the next day. So I thought, why not. It alternates perspective between a 17 year old boy and girl who meet under shitty life circumstances, become friends, fall in love, and then life becomes shitty again. I liked this book a lot, which was a pleasant surprise. If I’ve ever discussed books with you then at some point I have probably ranted about my general dislike for most young adult books, and mostly my dislike for John Green’s writing style (which when it comes to dialog, is as unrealistic as humanly possible). This doesn’t stop me from actually reading YA books because every so often I find a gem. All The Bright Places is absolutely one of those gems. Jennifer Niven does a great job at accurately enough portraying someone who is bipolar. The obsessiveness involved when you are manic, the endless fog surrounding your depressive downs and even though the word “bipolar” is only mentioned once by a school counselor, it’s still fairly obviously that’s what’s going with the male character. While yes as a whole the it is terribly dramatic at times, I didn’t feel like it really distracted from the core of the book, plus it kind of comes with the territory. The book ended on a hopeful, but not happy, note. The last 60 or so pages I read with fingers crossed, silently egging on Jennifer Niven to end the book the way it needed to be ended, and props to her for doing it. Real life never gets wrapped up in a neat and tidy perfect package, the truth of the matter is sometimes life fucking sucks and shitty stuff just happens and then keeps happening and you find a way through it because that’s just how life works. It was nice to see a young adult book demonstrate that in a non pretentious manner.