Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See
- Author Juliann Garey
- Narrator Dan Butler
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 26 December 2012
- Run Time 11 hours and 6 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Interior life.
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
In her tour de force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade and travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost twenty years. The novel intricately weaves together three timelines: the story of Greyson's travels (Rome, Israel, Santiago, Thailand, Uganda), the progressive unraveling of his own father seen through Greyson's eyes as a child, and the intimacies and estrangements of his marriage. The entire narrative unfolds in the time it takes him to undergo twelve thirty-second electroshock treatments in a New York psychiatric ward. This is a literary page-turner of the first order, and a brilliant inside look at mental illness.
Critics Review
“Butler’s first-person reading takes listeners
on a roller-coaster ride through Greyson’s emotions, from manic euphoria to near-suicidal
depression…Butler’s tones initially seem matter-of-fact, but he slowly conveys
Greyson’s meandering emotions and state of mind. Screenwriter Garey’s
compelling debut novel translates superbly to audio.”
“Greyson Todd is so utterly human…With the sheer force of her talent, Garey makes us want to look. And she makes us laugh. And she helps us understand and feel compassion.”
“Greyson Todd is the most fully-realized
fictional character I’ve come across in a while…Garey doesn’t shy away from the
depths of her character’s pain, but scenes that could easily become gratuitous
in lesser hands are rendered with restraint and grace. She excels at leading us
down the rabbit hole…Garey creates an atmosphere of exquisite tension.”
“A gripping tale of a man’s unraveling.”
“You won’t be able to put down this exhilarating
debut novel…Brave and touching.”
“Brilliantly captures the effects of
electro-convulsive therapy…[Garey’s] prose, with its mixture of the poetic and
the profane, illuminates the psyche of a bipolar man, who seeks not a Hollywood
ending but a restoration of the ‘glimmer’ of his faded past.”
“Juliann Garey writes with stark, lucid power
about the tumbling journey into madness and the agonizing climb back out. Her
electric prose trembles and her images vibrate at the edges, affording a rare
and precious experience of the troubled mind from the inside out. It’s
essential writing—terrifying, exhilarating, absurd, achingly human, and
absolutely compelling.”
“Garey breathes life into an uncomfortable and
often misunderstood subject and creates a riveting experience.”
“Garey evokes in stark detail the torment and
raw suffering of mental illness. A compelling read.”
“A fine, sharp-tongued debut. Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See is a
novel deeply wrapped around its subject, but it has its sights on grander
themes—namely, how to survive in a world not made for you.”
“[Greyson Todd] is interesting and complex…We are deftly led
through his erratic trains of thought, and suddenly we are with him in the
irrational, sometimes violent place, and oddly, we understand how we got there.”
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