Scattershot - by David Lovelace (Paperback)

About the Book

A coming-of-age story punctuated by a series of truly harrowing experiences, this devastating and empathetic portrait of the Lovelace family strips away the shame associated with bipolar disorder and celebrates the profound creative gifts that come with it.

Book Synopsis

The Glass Castle meets An Unquiet Mind in a mesmerizing, loving memoir about growing up in a family plagued by bipolar disorder.

Scattershot is David Lovelace's poignant, humorous, and vivid account of bipolar disorder's effects on his family, and his gripping exploits as he spent his life running from--and finally learning to embrace--the madness imprinted on his genes. Four out of five people in David Lovelace's immediate family have experienced bipolar disorder, including David himself. In 1986, his father, his brother, and David himself were all committed in quick succession. Only his sister has escaped the disease. A coming-of-age story punctuated by truly harrowing experiences, this devastating and empathetic portrait of the Lovelace family strips away the shame associated with bipolar disorder--a disease that affects approximately 5.7 million adult Americans--and celebrates the profound creative gifts that come with it.

Review Quotes

"Lovelace's poetic prose is both matter-of-fact and haunted, capturing the unpredictable rhythms of mental illness: 'Alone in the bathroom I made a smile in the mirror and it strangled my eyes.' Readers will get a real sense of the interior world of a single patient, and a family, on the verge of a mental breakdown."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Lovelace's] book's major strength is its language, which beautifully mimics his bipolarity. When Lovelace chronicles a manic episode, the prose comes in breathless, eloquent bursts; when he describes crushing depression, it's as though all the air is being sucked out of the room."--Kirkus Reviews

"Poet and bookseller Lovelace's humorous and harrowing first memoir follows his gentle, loving mother's, his eccentric preacher father's, his younger brother's, and his own descent into bipolar disorder. It's a coming-of-age story of an entire family; how parents and siblings are affected by both their own and each other's bipolarity. Marked by otherness simply by being the evangelical preacher's son, Lovelace also had to cope with his role as the family's caretaker, which he managed with grace even though he grew up with only marginal stability. No one in the family lacks love for one another, and that's what makes this story so poignant."--Elizabeth Brinkley, School Library Journal

About the Author

David Lovelace is a writer, carpenter, and former owner of the Montague Bookmill, a bookstore near Amherst, Massachusetts. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won mention in Patterson Review's Allen Ginsberg Award.