Lights On, Rats Out: A Memoir

by Cree Lefavour

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Book cover for Lights On, Rats Out

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A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2017
"Shockingly intimate."--
People Magazine

"This gritty account of a woman's struggle with self-abuse describes nearly gothic suffering. It is also a love story about a dedicated and gifted analyst and his difficult but equally gifted patient. Courageous and unsettling, LeFavour's memoir is infused with humor and wry insight as well as pain."--New York Times

"Eloquent, irreverent, graphically precise."--Vulture

As a young college graduate a year into treatment with a psychiatrist, Cree LeFavour began to organize her days around the cruel, compulsive logic of self-harm. Her body was a canvas of cruelty; each scar a mark of pride and shame. The thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. Adam N. Kohl--whose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzing--comes to be the only bright spot in her days. A "memoir in a category of its own" (Dani Shapiro), Lights On, Rats Out brings us closely into these years, recounting a fiercely bright and independent woman's charged attachment to a mental health professional and the dangerous compulsion to keep him in her life at all costs.

"Cree LeFavour uses the force of her blisteringly stark, mesmerizingly self-aware prose to not only unearth her own demons, but also equip the reader with the language to articulate our own as well."--Harper's Bazaar.com

"A brave and honest memoir...sad and piercingly smart, making for an unforgettable read."--Bookreporter

"Startling, beautiful language reminiscent of Plath."-- Booklist (starred review)

"Searingly eloquent."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Riveting."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  • ISBN13 9780802128058
  • Publish Date 21 August 2018 (first published 1 August 2017)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Black Cat
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 320
  • Language English