The Best Minds

As a person who lives with mental illness, and who sees friends, family, and neighbours struggle with their own, I hear a lot of talk about it, but it’s mostly surface. Memes and platitudes.

Rosen’s best friend went from promise to illness to a façade of recovery and finally tragedy, and Rosen has real things to say about it—considered, complicated, and with context both personal and historical. This is the conversation about mental illness I’ve wanted and needed that comes to the topic with compassion but doesn’t stint on honesty or look away from disappointment. I don’t get to look… show more.

I loved this book because it made me care intensely about the main character–a gifted, even brilliant young man who is gradually succumbing to a mental illness–and at the same time, reflect deeply about the ethical and political challenges of treating those with mental health disorders. 

Jonathan Rosen, who was good friends with the main character as a child but drifted away over time, does an amazing job as narrator, inserting himself at times but never in a heavy-handed or gratuitous way. I found myself having a hard time putting the book down as lives started spiraling out of control.… show more.