The Best Minds: A Story Of Friendship, Madness & The Tragedy Of Good Intentions - Jonathan Rosen

Memoir

Rating: 7.5/10

“In a minute there is time for decision or revision which in a minute can reverse.” T.S. Eliot

A haunting and deeply nuanced reconstruction of the forces that led the authors closest childhood friend, Michael, from the heights of brilliant promise to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. It is in many ways the authors reckoning against his own inaction in the face of his friend’s schizophrenia.

Rosen takes us back to an innocent time; before mental illness took hold before inaccurate assumptions and lurid headlines. Before delusions were mistaken for stories and stories mistaken for a life. Bravely depicting his role in it, telling the story he long resisted putting out into the world because he didn’t like his part in it.

The book painstakingly illustrates the entanglement of madness and genius. Calling the bluff of literature and the arts in their ability to describe or define with any measure of adequacy. And its cowardice in the unwillingness to tell the truth of a story that does not contain an uplifting spin. Some stories simply result in unbearable heartbreak.

At the close of this read I felt both sad and shattered, I was grateful that a hopeful perspective came to me. That the author picked up the mantel of the story his friend could not himself complete, and in doing so, benefitted them both.

Book Pairing(s): The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks, Brain On Fire: My Month Of Madness by Susannah Cahalan, Run Towards The Danger: Confrontations With A Body Of Memory by Sarah Polley