The Noonday Demon (Andrew Solomon) - Book Review

If you want to know more about depression from a physiological, scientific or personal viewpoint, then look no further. 'The Noonday Demon' by Andrew Solomon is part memoir/part tome centred all around the topic of depression. The book contains 12 chapters and is very thick, clocking in at 445 pages of the main text. It has a lot of objective facts related to suicide, treatment, addiction, poverty and history mixed with subjective stories and notes about breakdowns, sad tales, hope for the future and the causes/evolution as seen through the lens of history.

I summarised the book as follows. "This is a moving and dense read. It is sort of like the Wikipedia article (in terms of summarising the science) but dives much deeper and with a subjective narrative included. It will give you all the information about depression and you'll probably come away well informed but uncertain about the topic as a whole due to its complexity. Worth reading for the stories even if the science parts become outdated in the future."

As always, I hope you have a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. Kyrin out!

Timeline:
(0:00) - Intro & Synopsis
(8:10) - Objective Facts
(19:25) - Subjective Stories & Notes
(27:15) - Personal Observations/Takeaways
(30:49) - Summary

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