Depression - an A to Zen

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SUNBATHING IN THE RAIN: a cheerful book about depression

by Gwyneth Lewis

FLAMINGO (2002) ISBN 0007120613  £14.99  272PP

Lewis analyses the younger self who tried to save her mother from her own depressions by good behavior, but she does not sorrow over her, or rage at the pressures put on her to achieve. Lewis wants us to think about

depression, not be angry for her.

When Gywneth Lewis started to tell people about her depression, she was 'astonished to find she hadn't fooled anyone' by covering it up. Furthermore, 'it seemed that everybody had either experienced depression themselves or had watched someone close to them suffering'. Many sufferers from depression and their carers have exactly this experience: they talk about their isolating illness and find themselves suddenly in company. And when this happens, they immediately want to help each other by sharing stories of bouts, causes, and - they hope - cures.

Sunbathing in the Rain is one of those helpful exchanges in book form. Lewis charts the course of her own illness through her life, does her best to trace its causes, and intersperses this narrative with helpful advice to carers and sufferers and unsparing details of her most recent bout of depression and her journey - through Zen meditation and changes to career - out of it.

Lewis is an acclaimed poet and, as emerges in the auto-biographical sections of this book, a highly educated, deeply cultured, dauntingly high achiever who has spent most of her life immersed in the arts. This shapes many of her images for depressions: she chooses one of Goya's etchings as a central motif and draws on a wide range of literary and philosophical sources. Knowing as she does, however, that depression can reduce most sufferers to the reading level of Hello! magazine, she is careful to intersperse literary quotations with extracts from self-help books, conversations with beauticians, Zen nuns, doctors and newspaper clippings, cheerfully placing quotations from Johnson next to headlines from the Cambrian News.

This book is not one of those  stirring, poetic works of the sort critics unfailingly call 'searing'. Lewis talks about her writing and quotes from what are clearly rich notebooks, but her language is carefully simple and clear, sparing with images, almost muted. Nor does she use her many literary talents to create villains or victims - she seems wary, in fact of invading the privacy of those around her by painting their portraits too vividly.

Her husband Leighton is in constant attendance, for example, but we learn only the necessary minimum about his appearance, background and motivations. Similarly, though Lewis explores her own life analytically and with great candour, she at no time tries - as almost all autobiographies do - to make us pity her. Even when talking about an evidently difficult relationship with her mother, Lewis is carefully unemotive and distanced. She analyses the younger self who tried to save her mother from her own depressions by good behavior, but she does not sorrow over her, or rage at the pressures put on her to achieve in poetry competions. Lewis wants us to think about depression, not be angry for her. She sits at a sympathetic distance from her own story, carefully and thoughtfully analysing and judging - and so do we.

As a literary work, or autobiography, then, this book lacks some of the thrill and sparks we might expect. But the depressed person confessing to their problem is not looking for fireworks. A candid, optimistic sharing of experience from a kind, judicious and highly intelligent woman is probably a lot more helpful, and that is exactly what this book provides.

KATE CLANCHY

Kate Clanchy is a mother, teacher, writer and broadcaster