Luanch of The Lily Pond by Mike Barnes
Mike Barnes, will launch his new book, The Lily Pond: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, Myth and Metamorphosis (Biblioasis) on Wednesday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m. at Toronto mental health and psychology specialist Caversham Booksellers, 98 Harbord St. in Toronto. Free.
The Lily Pond is a memoir that explores searchingly the author's thirty-plus years of living with bipolar disorder. It chronicles unflinchingly the destructiveness of an illness that infiltrates thinking, feeling, and acting in ways that change the very fabric of identity, of the life story one is telling oneself; but it is equally searching in its exploration of the psyche's resources in healing and reknitting that story. Art is an essential strand in this weave: as balm, as goad, as source of potent symbol and pattern. By turns harrowing, reflective, speculative, and ultimately hopeful, The Lily Pond "spirals through four decades, relating an ongoing struggle from changing vantage points: as a patient, in and out of a hospital; as a family member; as a participant in psychotherapy; and as a caregiver to a loved one during her own mental illness. As the narrative evolves this ever-widening and deepening perspective, the largest and most important arc of The Lily Pond is revealed: the journey from the darkness of unconscious suffering to the daylight of mindful recovery
Mike Barnes is the author of Calm Jazz Sea, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Aquarium, winner of the 1999 Danuta Gleed Award for best first book of stories by a Canadian, and The Syllabus, a novel. His stories have appeared twice in Best Canadian Stories, three times in The Journey Prize Anthology, and won the Silver Medal for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards. He was the subject of a feature issue of The New Quarterly (Summer 2001) which included an interview and three new stories. Formerly a piano teacher, fishing guide, janitor, steelworker, dishwasher, clock salesman, security guard, English teacher, in recent years he has been working as a private tutor. He lives in Toronto.
