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Memoirs

GORILLA AND THE BIRD

Zachary McDermott

A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love

The story of a young man fighting to recover from a devastating psychotic break, and the mother who refuses to give up on him.

Zack McDermott, a twenty-six-year old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. This was it - his big dreams were finally coming true. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital. So begins the story of Zack's free fall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often darkly funny struggle to claw his way back to sanity, regain his identity, and rebuld some semblance of a stable life. It's a journey that will take him from New York City to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him his tough, bighearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world. Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy SEAL and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a woman who can love him back, bipolar and all. Written with raw emotional power, humor and tenderness, Gorilla and the Bird is a bravely honest account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.

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Book Published 2017-09-26 by Little Brown

Comments

Zack McDermott was also featured in The New York Post in a piece called This is What a Psychotic Breakdown Actually Feels Like. Read more...

The premise itself is fascinating but it gets even more interesting. [His mother] comes to rescue him and talks him out of Bellevue. The interesting thing about this book, and there are so many interesting things, . it's a very vividly drawn portrayal, it's funny, it's insightful, it's all true. The people that you meet through his eye are almost like a cast of characters. I was very strongly reminded [of] Piper Kerman's ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. The book is honest. It's big-hearted. The story has so many interesting access points and I would recommend it to anyone.

HBO has ordered a six-episode limited series based on Zack McDermott's GORILLA AND THE BIRD to be directed by Jean-Marc Vallée Read more...

impressive TV deal: Channing Tatum & Big Beach To Develop 'Gorilla And The Bird' Bipolar Disorder Memoir As TV Series Read more...

Zack was recently interviewed in Electric Literature.

A startlingly moving memoir of mother and son, structural injustice, and inflammable mental illness. Gorilla and the Bird is as piss-cuttin’ a pietà as anyone has any right to hope for. And Zack McDermott— the guy’s a fleet, funny, unsentimental storyteller who manages that rare thing: he allows a damaged soul to be found.

Glorious...one of the best memoirs I've read in years. . The sheer sharp pleasure of his prose is reason enough to pick it up... [McDermott] can move from barely controlled hilarity to the brink of rage to aching tenderness in a single breath.

Rolling Stone ran a detailed interview and a profile called 'Gorilla and the Bird': Inside New Memoir About Being Bipolar. Read more...

During a recent conversation for "Salon Talks," McDermott talked about overcoming the stigmas around mental illness, and returning to work after his hospitalization Read more...

Zack McDermott’s portrait of a mind under assault from bi-polar illness is both fascinating and heart-breaking to observe, and he takes us into his experience with riveting intensity. But McDermott's real achievement is capturing the moving determination and steadfast love of the mother who saves him, the remarkable Bird who breaks the loneliness, quiets the fear and gives him a home worth returning to, a special harbor that saves him. I was so moved by this book and these people.

Goodreads chose it as one of the 21 books picked by the Staff of Goodreads as: Favorite 2017 Under-the-Radar-Books "There's nothing funny about a psychotic break, yet Zack, a 26-year-old public defender in Brooklyn, writes about his experience with such humor, empathy, and disdain for himself that you laugh and cry with himand for him," says Lisa Jablonsky, sales director.

'Regaining sanity in a mental hospital is like treating a migraine at a rave.' It's a good line, and one that has the added benefit of being true. Zack McDermott should know; he's been through a few stints at mental institutions as a consequence of his bipolar disorder, which he chronicles, with an affable and often rueful wit. McDermott brings a vivid and unsettling degree of intimacy to his descriptions of mania's onset. In several gripping passages, we see it slowly, steadily encroaching around his life's edges.His work as a public defender grows out of a deep sense of empathy for the stigmatized and marginalized that's evident on every page.He uses that empathy to construct a deeply compassionate portrait of his mother a resilient woman whose love helps ground him in the real, even in moments when his reality is at its most friable..Gorilla and the Birdlooks outward, at the many interpersonal connections that bipolar disorder tests, and sometimes breaks forever.. Read more...

If the Joads were tanked up on Bud Light and Haldol and Steinbeck were under Hunter S. Thompson's influence, this might be the result—rueful, funny, and utterly authentic.

It's no longer surprising to me how many people have stories of their own or a loved one's struggle with mental health that they are dying to share but embarrassed to talk about," said McDermott, who says he's been flooded with responses. Read more...

Zack was interviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read more...

IT: Dea Planeta

Last week Zack McDermott published in essay in The New York Times called "The 'Madman' is Back in the Building," which has gotten a tremendous response Read more...

UK: Piatkus /Little Brown ; French Canada: Guy Saitn-Jean ; Italy: DeA Planeta ; Russia: AST

An excellent and detailed interview in Paste magazine: "Zack McDermott Challenges the Stigma Surrounding Bipolar Disorder" Read more...

This remarkable book illustrates Willam Osler’s dictum, ‘Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has.’ When that disease is bipolar disorder spiked with the Truman Show delusion, and that person is Zack McDermott, a terrific and terrifically funny writer, the result is an incredibly powerful read. Zack’s mother, endlessly strong and supportive, reminds us that we also need to ask what family the disease has.

GORILLA AND THE BIRD is selected as one of the New York Times' Editor's Choice: Staff Picks from the Book Review.

An excellent and detailed interview on NPRs KERA: Overcoming Mental Illness with the Power of a Mother's Love Read more...

Zack was interviewed in the University of Virginia School of Law Magazine. Read more...

Zack and his mother, the Bird, appeared on KAKE for a two-part interview. Read more...

...poetic and powerful debut... an important resource for anyone impacted by the scope of bipolar disorder, as well as those who want to learn more about it. Read more...