Book summary

The novelist William Styron realized during the summer of 1984, when he was 60 years old, that the joylessness, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts he had been experiencing were not simply part of an episode of harmless melancholy, but the marks of a severe and terrifying depression (he calls it "madness") that had become debilitating. As he chronicles the history of his illness, and looks for parallels in his family and in the lives of other writers, Styron finds the strength to overcome it through hospitalization and drug therapy--and, in the end, to write about it in this powerful reminiscence. DARKNESS VISIBLE was a bestseller when it was published in 1990, hailed by the many sufferers from depression who had not, at that point, found a description of their ordeal written with such immediacy and understanding.

Media reviews

"No psychiatric babble. No pontificating. No statistics. No whining. Just the clear presentation of a felt sense of depression and a ringing affirmation of our capacity to manifest superhuman courage."