We’re delighted to welcome Arianna Rebolini to H&H Books to celebrate the release of her debut memoir, BETTER: A MEMOIR ABOUT WANTING TO DIE, on Tuesday, June 10 at 7 PM.
Philly-based author Emma Copley Eisenberg (HOUSEMATES) will be Arianna’s conversation partner. You can learn more about the authors and their work on H&H's website.
Copies of BETTER and HOUSEMATES are available in-store at H&H Books and on our ecommerce site, and they'll be available the evening of the event, too.
Read more about BETTER below.
About the book:
After a decade of therapy and a stint in a psychiatric ward to treat suicidal depression, Arianna Rebolini was "better." She'd published her first book, enjoyed an influential, rewarding publishing job, and celebrated both a marriage and the birth of her first child--but none of it was enough to keep the desire to die at bay. One night, grappling with overwhelming debt and a prolonged depression, she composed goodbye letters to her husband and son while they slept just feet away.
In BETTER: A MEMOIR ABOUT WANTING TO DIE, Arianna Rebolini interweaves the story of her month-long period of crisis with decades of personal and family history, from her first cry for help in the fourth grade with a plastic knife, to her fears of passing down the dark seed of suicide to her own son, and her brother’s own life-threatening affliction.
To make sense of this dark desire, Arianna pored over the journals, memoirs, and writings of famous suicides, and eventually developed theories on what makes a person suicidal. Her curiosity was driven by the morbid, impossible need to understand what happens in the fatal moment between wanting to kill oneself and doing it—or, unthinkably, the moment between regretting the action and realizing it can’t be undone. When her own brother became institutionalized, Arianna realized that all of the patterns and trenchant insights could not crack the shell of his annihilating depression—and that the only way to help a person live is to address the societal factors that make them want to die.
"Brutally candid and ... also a strangely and beautifully optimistic reverie on coming clean about our darkest and most intimate struggles while slowly coming to terms with the idea that we might possibly be worthy of love, help, and...life." - Hannah Pittard, author of WE ARE TOO MANY
"There are readers for whom this may become the most important book they ever read." - Chloé Cooper Jones, author of EASY BEAUTY
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