“One Friday in April: a Story of Suicide and Survival”

There was nothing easy about Donald Antrim’s memoir, “One Friday in April”. From the first page, we watch our author struggle with despair on the rooftop of his Brooklyn home. Maybe it’s my own privilege that makes this book as illuminating as it is, but I’ve never studied suicide the way Antrim requires us to in reading this book.

From the Goodreads summary: “Through a clear and haunting reckoning with the author’s own story, One Friday in April confronts the limits of our understanding of suicide. Donald Antrim’s personal insights reframe suicide—whether in thought or in action—as an illness in its own right, a unique consequence of trauma and personal isolation, rather than the choice of a depressed person.”

Antrim, through his revelations and brave honesty about the landscape of his own mind at its darkest, demands that we confront what we think we know about suicide. Do we really understand it as the natural course of a disease process? As a social issue arising from trauma and isolation misunderstood? Is what we don’t know precisely what we need to support each other as we struggle with this disease?

As we watch a crisis of suicide unfold in our society, fewer and fewer of us remain untouched by the grief this disease leaves in its wake. I highly recommend Donald Antrim’s aching work to help us better understand the disease that we often consider a choice by those who suffer with it.