Laughter for Beginners

Colin Thompson (author)

Sceptre, Hodder Headline, Australia: 2002; 298pp

ISBN: 0733614388

Genres: autobiography, realistic fiction

Issues: depression, identity, mental health

'This is sanity gone mad. We are applying to join a lunatic asylum. A girl two seats down is weeping but we all pretend she isn't. That's what you do. In an office by the entrance two people are having a normal conversation. I assume it's normal – family problems, shopping, dinner and unpaid bills. I've never had a conversation like that but I know a lot of people who have.' (p4)

This is Peter's third hospitalisation and the only one where he's had to 'audition' – convince the other patients that he should be allowed in – probably because it's an experimental unit. Patients are taken off their medication and the focus is on 'talk therapy'. The time is the 1960s and Peter has bipolar disorder. He hides from his depression in a seemingly endless series of relationships - sex is a medicine that brings perhaps the only moment of happiness, or at least not-so-sadness in a desolate day. At times bleak, at times extraordinarily funny in a black humoured kind of way, Lessons in Laughter is a semi-probably-mostly-autobiographical novel that explores the desperate desire for normality that drives those who suffer from mental illness. Those who have any experience of mental illness or of caring for the mentally ill will recognise the helpless, hopeless, pain-ridden existence that is Peter's search for stability.

Thompson is a powerful, eloquent writer whose concise, highly visual prose carries the reader into his fictionalised experiences and therefore into the minds of those whose pain is often invisible except through its more self-destructive impulses. If you want to understand depression, especially the highs and lows of bipolar, read this book. If you want to understand the ineffectiveness of mental health treatment that has changed very little since Thompson's experiences, read this book. 'You think when you first take the pills and go into the asylum that everyone's trying to help you, but they're not. They're just taking the line of least resistance, switching you off and hoping that time passing will fix everything.'(p280)

Maybe it will help you look with a little more compassion on the outcast who walk among us, those who feel alienated by the apparent normality of the lives of others. Terribly sad but beautifully written, Lessons in Laughter is a thought-provoking read.

'I can see people who've been ill for longer than me and they wear it like an overcoat. I know only too well the seductive comforting side of depression. It lures you like a religion. 'Give me your soul and I'll take care of it for you,' it says, making you feel special. But these people around me never take their coats off at all. Where there were buttons, the coat has grown over and now the fabric is part of their fabric. Their depression is their life, a deep dark pit of isolation that ends up in suicide or homelessness on the streets scrabbling for cheap sherry and a dry place out of the rain. I'm fucked if I'm going to end up like that.' (p268)

Warning: explicit sex scenes, vulgar language, suicide