Book Reviews

You Are Not a Stranger Here
by Adam Haslett

Someone once asked me "Why is 'literature' always so depressing?" My answer was that it isn't, but when it's this well written, I don't mind a depressing story.

If you take chunks of life, add a little sorrow and grief, a little madness, gobs of uncertainty and say "make something of this," Adam Haslett comes up with something like You Are Not A Stranger Here. It can be depressing to read, and yet, there is something hopeful about it, somehow, amidst some hopeless situations. The book creates questions. What is the best way to treat mental illness and what causes mental illness, in the first place? How does it affect the one who is ill and the people around the ill one, not only family, but anyone who has contact with that person? How should/do we treat those who are different from us? What is mental illness and what is just different?

At times as I was reading the story seemed destined to become a horror tale. While many of the stories contained herein have some real horror in them, it never quite crosses the line into the horror genre. Only two stories even hint at the supernatural, and in one it's barely even a hint with schizophrenia as the diagnosis. The people here are real. We've met these people. Maybe we are these people. Haslett gives the reader a glimpse at rather unique and ordinary people who may be quite unlike us, or he may be describing us as no one else has.