Daniel Smith's Monkey Mind is the stunning articulation of what it is like to live with anxiety. As he travels through anxiety's demonic layers, Smith defangs the disorder with great humor and evocatively expresses its self-destructive absurdities and painful internal coherence. Aaron Beck, the most influential doctor in modern psychotherapy, says that "Monkey Mind does for anxiety what William Styron's Darkness Visible did for depression." Neurologist and bestselling writer Oliver Sacks says, "I read Monkey Mind with admiration for its bravery and clarity....I broke out into explosive laughter again and again." Here, finally, comes relief and recognition to all those who want someone to put what they feel, or what their loved ones feel, into words.
I wanted to like this book, but in the end I just couldn't care about it. I tried to keep going, but when I kept putting off reading those last 30 pages for over a week I realized it wasn't worth my time to finish.
First, this book wasn't very well written. I had to re-read multiple sentences just to figure out what he meant. If an author can find a flow, I can get over clunky writing but this book never found its voice for me. There was no real story progression and absolutely no medical expertise or even education on the authors part. The author self-diagnosed himself as anxious but blamed things like his first sexual experience or Mommy issued for his disease. And, at least not before the last 30 pages, the author never made a sincere effort at getting treatment.
I'd keep writing this review, but frankly I've already dedicated too much time to this book. Critics may have loved this book, but as someone who has lived with anxiety this book missed an opportunity to tell people what it's really like.
