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STRANGERS TO OURSELVES by Rachel Aviv

Submitted by mcutler on Fri, 2022-09-23 23:18
Posted on September 23, 2022 in
STRANGERS TO OURSELVES by Rachel Aviv
Rachel Aviv’s STRANGER TO OURSELVES received a rave review from The Wall Street Journal. Elizabeth Winkler writes: “The book unfolds in what are effectively case studies of subjects suffering from different disorders—depression, schizophrenia, psychosis—but these cases are not closed. They do not lend themselves to neat, scientific conclusions. Though the subjects come from different times and cultures, they all occupy what Ms. Aviv calls the ‘psychic hinterlands, the outer edges of human experience, where language tends to fail.’ Ms. Aviv wanders out to these far reaches, reporting with deep empathy and nuance on a category of experience that, she acknowledges, she might not have recognized ‘if I hadn’t been there myself’…Ms. Aviv paradoxically finds language for the most ineffable registers of human experience. She begins to name correctly what has been named wrongly. For a journalist, as for a psychiatrist, there is no higher achievement.” The book also received praise in a review from Wired, where Kate Knibbs writes: “If anyone knows the weight of stories, Aviv does. She’s a star New Yorker writer, capable of drilling into complicated, morally queasy situations and excavating definitive tales from the chaos…The strength of STRANGERS TO OURSELVES is in its engrossing case studies, which contribute vivid anecdotes to this ongoing conversation about the complex and perplexing nature of the mind…Aviv’s pain and empathy are palpable on the page; it is clear she doesn’t want to emphasize their differences but rather underline their fundamental similarity. She wants to end by pointing out, one last time, how porous the borders are between our stories.” Aviv also sat down for conversations and interviews with the LARB Radio Hour podcast, Shondaland, and The Maris Review podcast. Farrar, Straus and Giroux published STRANGERS TO OURSELVES on September 13, 2022.