Nothing Was the Same
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From the internationally acclaimed leader of An Unquiet Mind, an exquisite, haunting meditation on mortality, grief, and loss.
Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison—who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with a writerly elegance and passion—could bring such a delicate touch to the theme of losing a spouse to cancer. In direct, straightforward, and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her spouse, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled debilitating dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic honesty, candor, wit, and simplicity, she describes his death, her own long, hard struggle with grief, and her efforts to distinguish grief from depression.
But she also recalls the fantastic joy that Richard brought her during the nearly twenty years they had together. Wryly humorous anecdotes mingle with bittersweet memories of a relationship that was passionate and loving—if troubled on occasion by her manic-depressive (bipolar) illness—as Jamison reveals the ways in which her spouse encouraged her to write openly about her mental illness and, through his courage and grace taught her to live fully.
A penetrating psychological study of grief viewed from deep inside the experience itself, Nothing Was the Same is also a deeply moving memoir by a superb writer.
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I have to admit to some bias. While Jamison can write entertainingly, she has made an entire career out of an illness from which she suffers. There was once a adage that “no man can be a judge in his own cause.” In recent times, but, it appears that only the afflicted may speak of the affliction. This is entirely too self-absorbed, self-interested, and downright selfish for me. Where this leads in this reflection on marriage is that the spouse is seen as something of a lover but more importantly a collaborator against bipolar disorder, specifically that suffered by the leader. He was probably a generous, smart, and loving fellow. She probably is a generous, smart, and loving woman. Yet the circle of self wears thin.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Book: Nothing Was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison
About: Jamison writes about her marriage to Dr. Richard Wyatt, his death from cancer and her grief afterward.
Pros: Well written, quick read.
Cons: Gets a small too “deep” for me in the section about her grief.
Grade: B
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
From the newspaper review, I expected a book about dealing with grief after death of a spouse, but the book was mostly about the pre-death relationship and the differences between depression and grief. Disappointing.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I have read all of Ms Jamison’s books previously written, and loved them. This one disappointed me to some extent because it repeats a lot about her bi-polar illness and not just it’s impact on her and her spouse’s relationship. But, if it had been reversed, I’d read this first and then went back to her additional books, this one would have struck me in much more favorable terms.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Kay Redfield Jamison’s chapter “Mourning and Melancholia” in NOTHING WAS THE SAME: A MEMOIR (pp. 168-182) is worth the fee of the book. As they say, she’s been there and done that — both the melancholia and more recently now the mourning. As a result, her extended comparison and contrast of the two similar but different experiences is an invaluable addition to Freud’s legendary essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (written in 1915; published in 1917).
As invaluable as that one chapter is, but, Jamison does not undertake to write in this new memoir the kind of detailed circumstantial subjective account of her recent experience of mourning that she undertook to write in her earlier memoir about her earlier experience of a manic psychotic mental illness — see Jamison’s AN UNQUIET MIND: A MEMOIR OF MOODS AND MADNESS (1995). Readers who are interested in reading a highly circumstantial subjective account of the experience of mourning the death of a spouse should read Joan Didion’s THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING (2005).
Even if we allow that Didion’s reference in her title to “The Year” may occupy some poetic telescoping of time, Jamison clearly indicates that her experience of mourning the death of her spouse extended well beyond a year (e.g., “initial year,” p. 166; “I did not open the box for five years,” p. 134). Like Didion, Jamison also turned to reading literature about grief, most notably in her case Tennyson’s IN MEMORIAM. Nevertheless, in her new memoir Jamison concentrates most of her attention not so much on recounting her subjective experiences of grief (as Didion does) as on recounting her fond, although at times painful, memories of her life and like for her dearly beloved spouse (as Didion also does).
In light of Jamison’s history of psychotic mental illness, her experience of life after that event must have been haunted by that event. After all, how could she have forgotten it or ever felt that she was not vulnerable to a reappearance, especially since her entire adult life has involved recurrent bouts of depression and also recurrent bouts of hypomanic highs? In light of her life tale, her recent journey through the protracted experience of grief must have seemed to her to have been a most perilous journey at the time. But she made it through and has lived to tell the tale.
– Thomas J. Farrell, leader of Walter Ong’s Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (The Hampton Press Communication Series (Media Ecology).)
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5