The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia - Hardcover

Maclean, David Stuart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547519273 ISBN 13: 9780547519272

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

Synopsis

“Brilliant and painful and hilarious.” —Antonya Nelson

On October 17, 2002, David MacLean “woke up” on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. No money. No passport. No identity.

Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he was told he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he had been taking. Upon his return to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.

The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, drawn from David MacLean’s award-winning This American Life essay, is a deeply felt, closely researched, and intensely personal book. It asks every reader to confront the essential questions of our age: In our geographically and chemically fluid world, what makes me who I am? And how much can be stripped away before I become someone else entirely? 

About this title

About the Author

DAVID STUART MACLEAN is a Pen/American award-winning writer. His work has appeared in Ploughshares and on the radio program This American Life. He has a PhD from the University of Houston and is a co-founder of the Poison Pen Reading Series. He lives in Chicago with his wife. 

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Answer to the Riddle Is Me:

A mesmerizing, unsettling memoir about the ever-echoing nature of identity written in vivid, blooming detail. Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Gone Girl

A gripping medical mystery, a heartwarming personal journey, and a chilling indictment of the commonly prescribed drug that upended MacLean s life but left his superb literary skills intact. Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

MacLean fearlessly explores his journey to the edge of madness and his subsequent return to sanity in an unsettling, sometimes riotous, memoir. Publishers Weekly

What does it mean to be the person you are? How much can be stripped away before you are no longer you? This is a fascinating book that resides in the mind as if you lived it yourself. Robert Boswell, author of Tumbledown

Thoughtful, terribly honest, often funny, and utterly unselfindulgent, this is a riveting work of narrative art. Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me

A compelling personal account and a frightful caution to physicians and travelers who continue to place their faith in a very dangerous drug. Remington L. Nevin, MD, MPH, Mefloquine expert

David Stuart MacLean is a writer who can break your heart, terrify you, and make you laugh all on the same page. The Answer to the Riddle Is Me is a masterful exploration of the funhouse of identity. Mat Johnson, author of Pym

From the Inside Flap

Brilliant and painful and hilarious. Antonya Nelson

On October 17, 2002, David MacLean woke up on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. No money. No passport. No identity.

Taken to a mental hospital by the police, MacLean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he was told he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he had been taking. Upon his return to the States, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself.

The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, drawn from David MacLean s award-winning This American Life essay, is a deeply felt, closely researched, and intensely personal book. It asks every reader to confront the essential questions of our age: In our geographically and chemically fluid world, what makes me who I am? And how much can be stripped away before I become someone else entirely?

Reviews

While studying in India on a Fulbright scholarship in 2002, Ohio native MacLean abruptly lost consciousness and came to his senses in a Hyderabad train station minus any memories of his name or reasons for being there. Luckily, a kindly station attendant took pity on the presumably drug-addled foreigner and found him refuge in a well-run mental hospital where he hallucinated his way back to reality as friends and parents were contacted. So begins this riveting, sad, and funny memoir from PEN literary award-winner MacLean, expanded from an essay featured on the radio show, This American Life. Contrary to the station agent’s assumption, however, MacLean’s amnesia was triggered by an allergic reaction to Lariam, a common antimalaria agent that receives a scathing critique here. In addition to short-circuiting his memories, the drug’s aftermath forced MacLean to get reacquainted with his parents, a girlfriend, and his rationale for coming to India in the first place. His work is both a sharply written autobiography and an insightful meditation on how much our memories define our identities. --Carl Hays

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0547519273
• ISBN 13: 9780547519272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292