1 out of 4 stars
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Alsup’s book There and Back There Again is a collection of the author’s daily thoughts, covering his day-to-day life experience. He talks a lot about his schizophrenia and the voices he hears. This is what initially drew me to the book because I find the topic incredibly interesting.
The chapters mainly talk about the different voices (or auditory hallucinations) Alsup hears in his head and the struggles he faces with them, particularly one called Chipmunk (named as such because of the squeaky sound). These voices are very negative, hostile and manipulative towards Alsup. Some of them try convincing him to hurt or kill himself. It is clear that some of the experiences Alsup has been through were awful and he’s grown very tough because of them. Alsup’s fear of these voices keeps him on edge a lot: he often feels that his privacy is being destroyed by these voices.
There wasn’t really a plot to this book; it was more of a collection of incredibly emotional essays or letters in no particular order that outlined some of Alsup’s thoughts. Some seemed to switch between different periods in time and others didn’t seem set in a particular period, but rather as general musings.
One of the main objectives of these essays is for Alsup to explain his draft of a constitutional amendment surrounding privacy. He is currently requesting public support for this, which is why he mentions it in the book.
Other than Alsup and the voices he hears, there aren’t any other named characters. Anyone else who is spoken about to is simply referred to as ‘they’ and it is as a collective. This made it quite difficult at times to distinguish between the voices that he hears and real people in his life. I would have liked more clarity and better descriptions of the other people.
While Alsup seems very intelligent, he also seems quite paranoid and often believes that the whole world is against him. These beliefs seem to come from one of the voices in his head. Throughout this collection of essays, Alsup swore a lot and it was often aimed at the ‘others’ (voices or other characters). Whilst, I felt sympathy for him, I found that overall he was quite a dislikeable character.
I didn’t enjoy reading this book. There was no story and I was incredibly confused throughout. Normally, I find reading about mental illnesses very interesting but I really struggled here. I think the main reason why I struggled so much reading this is because there didn’t seem to be a purpose; I couldn’t understand why Alsup had written or published it. It was a collection of his thoughts but there was no one idea or goal that tied these together, so it felt disjointed and didn’t read like a book. I would give it 1 out of 4 stars for the above reasons.
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There and Back There Again
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