![]() Time to write that book.” And so Silver Livings seems to have been irresponsibly born to add to the plethora of poorly-researched media about the brain. This is the sort of thing that happens after one watches half a dozen Hollywood films on memory loss and says, “What the hell? I’m pretty well a licensed psychiatrist now. In other words, Pat is whatever the author wants him to be in the moment, science and logic be damned. ![]() In the first few pages, I even thought Pat’s stilted, aloof descriptions of his life were meant to indicate some form of autism. There are times when Pat seems mentally handicapped (whether since birth or as a result of an accident, one can only guess for most of the book), clinically depressed, schizophrenic, or psychotic. Pat is neither a good main character nor an accurate portrayal of those who struggle with mental illness, neurological disorders, or traumatic brain injuries. He’s prescribed numerous medications for his mental health, but no clear diagnosis is revealed. He occasionally has hallucinations involving Kenny G-seriously-which often result in violent outbursts. Any negative reality is avoided in favor of the more hopeful “silver linings” of life. Seemingly suffering from convenient memory loss, Pat strangely calls the neural health facility he’s lived in “the bad place” and refers to the separation from his wife, Nikki, as “apart time.” He struggles to understand certain emotions and has an almost childlike understanding of the world around him. It’s here that you’re introduced to Pat Peoples’ stilted and juvenile, first-person narration, and I’ll admit I had no idea how I should view it. ![]() In the first several pages of Silver Linings, author Matthew Quick sets the tone for the entire book: It’s to be one of those vague memory loss stories where the main character has to discover his own past. In short, I entered Silver Linings with very little knowledge of what it was about, and my review covers the confusion I felt while reading it. I did not read a review or even a summary for this book prior to reading.At the time of this review, I still had not watched a trailer for the film.I read The Silver Linings Playbook because I knew the film adaptation was “about mental illness” and had been nominated for Best Picture in the Oscars.My review should be prefaced with the following: With the help of family, friends, and American football fans, Pat discovers life may not always go according to plan, but that that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. First, though, Pat knows he must continue to improve himself, to become the man Nikki always needed him to be. Perpetually optimistic, he believes he will soon be reunited with his wife, Nikki. When Pat Peoples’ mother brings him home from the neural health facility, he sees it as a turning point in the “movie” of his life.
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