Description
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2017
"Shockingly intimate."People Magazine
This gritty account of a womans struggle with self-abuse describes nearly gothic suffering. It is also a love story about a dedicated and gifted analyst and his difficult but equally gifted patient. Courageous and unsettling, LeFavours memoir is infused with humor and wry insight as well as pain.New York Times
Eloquent, irreverent, graphically precise.Vulture
As a young college graduate a year into treatment with a psychiatrist, Cree LeFavour began to organize her days around the cruel, compulsive logic of self-harm. Her body was a canvas of cruelty; each scar a mark of pride and shame. The thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. Adam N. Kohlwhose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzingcomes to be the only bright spot in her days. A memoir in a category of its own (Dani Shapiro), Lights On, Rats Out brings us closely into these years, recounting a fiercely bright and independent womans charged attachment to a mental health professional and the dangerous compulsion to keep him in her life at all costs.
Cree LeFavour uses the force of her blisteringly stark, mesmerizingly self-aware prose to not only unearth her own demons, but also equip the reader with the language to articulate our own as well.Harper's Bazaar.com
A brave and honest memoir...sad and piercingly smart, making for an unforgettable read.Bookreporter
Startling, beautiful language reminiscent of Plath. Booklist (starred review)
Searingly eloquent.Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Riveting.Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Shockingly intimate."People Magazine
This gritty account of a womans struggle with self-abuse describes nearly gothic suffering. It is also a love story about a dedicated and gifted analyst and his difficult but equally gifted patient. Courageous and unsettling, LeFavours memoir is infused with humor and wry insight as well as pain.New York Times
Eloquent, irreverent, graphically precise.Vulture
As a young college graduate a year into treatment with a psychiatrist, Cree LeFavour began to organize her days around the cruel, compulsive logic of self-harm. Her body was a canvas of cruelty; each scar a mark of pride and shame. The thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. Adam N. Kohlwhose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzingcomes to be the only bright spot in her days. A memoir in a category of its own (Dani Shapiro), Lights On, Rats Out brings us closely into these years, recounting a fiercely bright and independent womans charged attachment to a mental health professional and the dangerous compulsion to keep him in her life at all costs.
Cree LeFavour uses the force of her blisteringly stark, mesmerizingly self-aware prose to not only unearth her own demons, but also equip the reader with the language to articulate our own as well.Harper's Bazaar.com
A brave and honest memoir...sad and piercingly smart, making for an unforgettable read.Bookreporter
Startling, beautiful language reminiscent of Plath. Booklist (starred review)
Searingly eloquent.Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Riveting.Publishers Weekly (starred review)
