The Quiet Room

The Quiet Room was a fantastic book. I prefer to have a book that keeps me interested and wanting more and this book did just that, I didn’t want to put it down. I would highly recommend this book to any of my friends looking for something a different than they typically read. The reader can easily picture the people in their head and the scenarios are described so well that they feel involved in the story. It was definitely not a book I would have thought I would read in an English class, maybe a psychology class, but it was such a great book I can now see why it was chosen. Books I typically read for pleasure are generally romance or adventure novels. I don’t know if this is a book I would have picked on my own, however I would definitely read another one like it.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the same type of therapy doesn’t always work for people with the same diagnoses; I would say this this book absolutely reiterates that. Lori, who was diagnosed with schizophrenic-affective disorder didn’t respond to some of the typical treatments of drug and psychotherapy that people were typically given. I would say that this book brought perspective to my life, of the struggles one goes through with a mental illness. Lori’s struggles weren’t obvious to those on the outside except that something was very different, if not odd, about her. We got to hear from her perspective what was going on in her mind, the voices saying “to die, to die, to die” or telling her that no one liked her. She couldn’t focus on anyone talking to her when the voices were shouting at her; she worked so hard to drown them out with music, or trying to focus on the person talking. I can’t even begin to comprehend the struggle and frustration she, and others with disorders, go through on a daily basis.