Really enjoyed this novel. Story was very interesting and engaging. Looking forward to reading more by this author. Highly recommend!

This was a book I really expected to like, but didn’t. It’s a novel about a woman named Susan Huffman, a college professor on the track to tenure. When a newcomer named Lorraine Davis arrives in town and accepts an invitation to Susan and her husband Samuel’s home, Susan begins to have strange visions and hear voices. From that point, the story chronicles Susan’s descent into the hell that is Bipolar Disorder I.

It could have been a great book. It’s certainly a great premise on which to base a novel. Unfortunately, I found many of the characters too flat and one-dimensional. Worse, Susan is judgmental and completely unlikable. She sees herself as being above the other women in her Appalachian community whom she refers to as “Philistines.” She is the consummate snob. To me, Susan was just not a sympathetic character. While I could in the abstract appreciate the horror of her experience hearing voices and having religious visions, I just couldn’t feel anything for her as a character.

The novel reads at times like a series of vignettes, and images come at the reader rapid-fire, and I think that has to be what it’s like in the mind of one experiencing this type of mania or psychosis. The beauty of this novel is that Hutsell is able to convey in such poetic language what must be utterly terrifying, and to shine a kind light on a disease that is so misunderstood and feared.

The Book of Susan provides an honest portrayal of the experience of bipolar disorder and I recommend it to you without hesitation.

Do not be put off by the blurb here. The God stuff is just a small part of the story, this story mostly focuses on Susan’s mental health. Honestly this was a well written novel that surprised me with its depth and emotion. I’ll be thinking about Susan’s story for a long time after reading this.

Susan has her life perfectly planned out, she’s a college professor, wife and mother. She meets the new neighbors and they have a dinner party. While they are visiting, she starts to have visions. She thinks that it’s Gods way of warning her. She is later diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her perfectly planned life starts to untangle, while she is trying to adjust to her new diagnosis. She manages to begin to live her as she reinvents it. This is a very emotional read and a fascinating story about a woman who reinvents life after a unexpected diagnosis.

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Paraclete Press for this ARC, I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

The story starts out "foggy" and I was near to putting it aside but then realized the serious intent of the narrative - an awareness of individuals living with mental illness, and in this case, with bipolar disorder. I'm glad I stuck with the story that, although fiction and reads like a diary of Susan's distress and bewilderment and then coping mechanism, gives a virtual scope of the reality of living life with something that is not going to go away. Her distress and vulnerablility were palpable. Those who have this and/or other mood disorders will find some comfort, I dare say, in knowing there is some hope to cope out there. Those who are family members or friends of those who struggle with such disorders will be able to gain greater understanding and empathy along with compassion if they take Susan's story to heart.
~Eunice C., Reviewer/Blogger~

July 2022

Disclaimer: This is my honest opinion based on the review copy sent by Net Galley and the Paraclete Press.

When I opened 'The Book of Susan' I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew it was a novel about mental health but was unprepared for it to be one of those books I couldn't put down until the end. 'The book of Susan is a book that chronicles more than its description.

As a college professor, wife, and mother of Ian, Susan is struggling. As a professor in the field of Appalachian Studies, she is fascinated by the journey of a woman from the past. It is Susan's tenure year at the small private college where she is a well-thought-of professor and as she researches the life of this other woman, her own grasp of reality starts to crumble. It is little things at first; a woman she doesn't like, imaginings from the spiritual world, uncontrollable emotions, reactions to her son's immature behavior. As tensions in her life build she is challenged with her diagnosis, her medication, and her own personal life with a man she once admired and trusted. There is a blur between reality, emotional reaction, and imaginings. Susan's entire life is changed and upset by her diagnosis and she must rebuild and reset her own self-worth in a world that has little understanding of mental illness. She feels dominated by those with the power of illusion and justice but finds solace and aid in friends from whom she is isolated.

This is the story of Susan. It is a well-told journey with a fascinating heroine in a beautiful setting in East Tennessee. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to more from Melanie K. Hutsell the author. Thanks to #NetGalley#TheBookofSusan for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I approached reading The Book of Susan from my life experiences as a clinical psychologist. It is important to understand that bipolar disorder is not a defect of character but the result of an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. While certain symptoms appear almost universally, the experience is unique to each individual. Fortunately, for the majority, the symptoms can be managed with medication and support.

The Book of Susan is a work of fiction that reads like a memoir. The author nimbly covers all of the bases: thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behavior. Hutsell's prowess shows in her almost poetic description of the main character's descent into madness and her path towards recovery. She realistically captures the fracturing of logical thinking, the reluctance to admit that there is a problem, and the struggles of recovery. The Book of Susan provides an honest portrayal of the experience of bipolar disorder and I recommend it to you without hesitation.

Thank you to Paraclete Press and Netgalley for providing a complimentary copy for my enjoyment and review. Expected publication date is 7/19/22.

This book is so beautifully important. Not only is the writing absolutely perfect, the prose had me wanting to tattoo lines on the marrow of my bones. I ugly sobbed three times and lost count after that. Utterly and crucially important read. I cannot stress how fucking incredible this book is.

"God, why would you ever ask me to believe that you exist when you are nothing but my sickness?"

Originally, I picked this up because I have found myself recently drawn to stories with a religious element, despite being atheist/agnostic myself. It was only upon finishing the book that I recognized this is from a Christian press, which, if I'm being honest, I'm a little surprised about. This is not a positively religious book — if anything, Susan is against religion for most of the book, and when she does interact with it, she later reflects on it in a negative way.

One review I read said it "complexifies typical notions of Appalachia" which is a bit of an overstatement. Yes, Susan is a liberal in comparison to the stereotype of Republican, pro-life Appalachia, and reflects on this briefly at one point early in the novel, but beyond that, she's simply a woman from a small farm town. Her hometown I felt could be set in any state or rural area. That said, I am not from Appalachia.
But I can speak on the cast around Susan: The characters we meet in either of her spheres are too surface-level for me to say they are "complex." The woman we hear most about, Lorraine, is only ever spoken about in scathing tones. Other characters are on a rotating carousel that takes them away as quickly as they appear, leaving me bereft in actually knowing anything about them.

What I did appreciate about the book was what appears to be a fairly honest depiction of suddenly discovering you have a mental illness. Susan has a great little life with her husband and son. The relationship dynamic reminded me of the mother/father/son in Damnation Spring — young son, stoic husband, wife that is just a touch too young for him (in Susan, Samuel's eldest son is only 5 years younger than Susan, which I find a bit repulsive.) But upon her diagnosis, and in the outbursts and struggles leading up to it, Susan's friends and family melt away from her — except a few tried-and-true friends. She struggles to find a psychiatrist. She takes a leave of absence from her university but has a fragile tightrope to walk.

However, I think some of the story-telling components used to make the BP diagnosis feel real to the reader didn't land for me. Things like:
- No long paragraphs. The author pressed enter every sentence or two for pages at a time. I was able to read this entire novel in about 2 hours because of it, but it made the story feel choppy for me. To be fair, this fits the chaos that Susan is feeling during the worst throes of her bipolar disorder. One review describes this novel as "compulsively readable" and to that I do have to agree.
- Use of parentheticals. These felt odd and unnecessary to me. The book teetered between diary and oral telling, with portions being very clearly written into a journal, but the book itself alluding to being past tense.
- Incongruous use of present and past tense. I understand this was likely done to show confusion and timeline issues in Susan's mind, but it brought me out of the story.

I liked this read, but it feels like a debut literary novel, which it is. However, I would be curious to see what Hutsell produces in coming works.

What can you do when your life and your reality are crumbling around you?
The Book of Susan by Melanie K. Hutsell is a gripping story of a woman whose latent bipolar I disorder has begun to emerge. Through her eyes, we as readers are able to really experience how it can feel to be mentally ill. Rather than sensationalizing it, Hutsell shows the mundanity between mania and depression, in a way that seems almost painfully accurate.
Dr. Susan Huffman is erudite, judgemental, and, quite frankly, unlikeable.. Snobbish, she refers to others in her local Appalachian community as “philistines'', she and her husband Samuel, as well as a small circle of friends, seem to see themselves as above the others around them, and thus hold themselves to higher standards.
So, when Susan begins acting oddly, her husband seems to nearly immediately decide she’s unfit, as she doesn’t bounce back from a depressive episode and seems to have difficulty caring for their son Ian.
Inside her head, though, things are even more dire. Readers are immediately told that Susan experienced what she believed to be a religious vision (something that she, a highly educated modern woman, had heretofore disdained). Even worse, she becomes convinced that she must write a book that will explain everything to the world, and that a newcomer to her circle, Lorraine, is the embodiment of evil.
Interestingly, Susan is preparing for her tenure review, which focuses on a young Appalachian woman who purportedly experienced religious visions as well. This is implied to possibly be the inspiration to her psychotic symptoms. That, combined with the extreme stress of raising a child, preparing for the review, and holding herself to an impossible standard, it’s no wonder that her symptoms worsened at a rapid rate.
Although the psychotic instances are few, Susan has a manic episode after the initial hallucination. She writes all day and all night, goes to various churches and feels connected with everyone, and genuinely believes she can save the world. Not the most harmful symptoms, certainly, but alarming nonetheless.
After an incident involving their child, Samuel files for divorce and custody, leaving a newly-diagnosed Susan essentially adrift. This is where I really started to sympathize with Susan, and, for me, is what makes this book so engrossing. The writing made me care about her and her well-being, even though I personally felt she was an unlikeable character.
The moment when Susan realizes her vision and subsequent religious fervor is particularly heart-wrenching. Hutsell writes “All the insights, the beautiful feelings, the creeping suspicions. None had been anything. Meant anything. … My heart was spurting and dumping all the blood in my body into the floor,”(loc 1359-1360).
Speaking of which, religion is a big theme throughout the book. Its publisher, Paraclete Press, specifically publishes Christian books, music, and so on. By the end of the book, Susan realizes that although her visions weren’t real, God is, and she reconsiders her views on religious people. There’s an obvious bias here, but overall, the Christianity in the book doesn’t feel too smothering. Susan is a bit of a stereotypical atheist at first, immediately assuming that a student wants to argue her grade based on religious discrimination, and looking down on the religious in general. Most importantly, though, Hutsell emphasizes that Susan’s visions and manic religious purpose are indeed symptoms of her illness. She takes medication, goes to therapy, and even attends a support group for people with bipolar disorder (although her preconceived notions on the “crazy people” are rather offensive, it fits her character). Susan’s initial friend group includes two gay men and a woman who constantly laments the Iraq war, so things do appear more moderate than you might initially suspect based on the description of a Christian book by a Christian publisher.
This book isn’t perfect, and I don’t think it’s for everyone. Susan can be grating, her husband infuriating, but the story is well-paced and leaves the reader wanting to know the end to Susan’s story. So, although it isn’t exactly my usual taste, I do recommend you give it a read.

Overall rating: 4 stars