Underneath the Lemon Tree: A Memoir of Depression and Recovery - Softcover

Rice-Oxley, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408703785 ISBN 13: 9781408703786

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2012

Synopsis

On paper, things looked good for Mark Rice-Oxley: wife, children, fulfilling job. But then, at his 40th birthday party, his whole world crumbled as he succumbed to depression...How many men do you know who have been through periods when their lives haven't seemed right? How badly askew were things for them? Many men suffer from depression yet it is still a subject that is taboo. Men often don't visit the doctor, or they don't want to face up to feelings of weakness and vulnerability. By telling his story, Mark Rice-Oxley hopes it will enable others to tell theirs. In this intensely moving memoir he retraces the months of his utmost despair, revisiting a landscape from which at times he felt he would never escape. Written with lyricism and poignancy, Mark captures the visceral nature of this most debilitating of illnesses with a frightening clarity, while at the same time offering a sympathetic and dispassionate view of what is happening, and perhaps why. This is not a self-help book but a memoir that is brimful of experience, understanding and hope for all those who read it. It is above all honest, touching and surprisingly optimistic.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Rice-Oxley is a news editor at the Guardian specialising in foreign news. He was born in Hampshire in 1969, educated at Portsmouth Grammar School, Exeter University and Voronezh University in the USSR. He joined the Guardian after 10 years reporting and writing from Moscow, Paris and Eastern Europe. His journalism has been published in scores of titles worldwide. He lives in Kingston with his wife and three children.

From the Back Cover

'I am on a boat on the Thames. There's a dance floor and a bar and my brother-in-law is dressed as James Brown, which doesn't happen every day. I however am having the most frightening time of my life. From under my unconvincing Jimi Hendrix wig I whisper to my mother "Stay close", and grip her hand like it's the first day at school.'

Fearless, sceptical and pragmatic, journalist Mark Rice Oxley was freelancing in Moscow by twenty-three, reporting from Bosnia by thirty. But as he reaches his fortieth birthday the dark virus of depression takes hold and he can barely leave home; he cannot listen to music or read a book; he battles panic attacks, insomnia and suicidal thoughts.A year passes before he begins to understand what has happened to him.

Applying a journalist's eye to his illness, Rice Oxley charts depression's vicious circles of despair, resignation and hope, and reports on the treatments available - from meditation to drugs to cognitive mindfulness therapy.Talking to psychotherapists, friends and fellow sufferers; he unsparingly examines his own life for causes and with bleak honesty catalogues the terrible effects of depression on work, family and love.

Stark, humorous and consistently intelligent, Is That All There Is? is a remarkable report from the frontline of depression: an answer to a devastating modern epidemic it offers not a cure but a courageous call for compassion and hope.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408703785
• ISBN 13: 9781408703786
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320