I loved this. It was super interesting and the author really took me on a journey through working in a psychiatric ward. But it was more than that, it also told stories of the people who worked there. It was eye-opening and beautifully written. It’s a book I won’t forget.

I thought this was a great insight into the world of a psychiatric ward, gave me some very mixed emotions.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

Ran out of time to read this before it was archived but loved what I had started!! Will be looking out for a physical copy for sure.

I found the form of "The Art of Binding People" very enchanting and poetic, but the content made me cringe. A lot.

This book concludes many years of the author's work in psychiatry, beginning around the 80's. It's the ongoing observation of how the area of mental healthcare progressed and changed, as well as did the individuals involved in it. However, even though the book was very interesting at times, the narrative was also very characteristic of a white and well-off man from two generations ago. Examples? Comments on women who surround him--professionals and patients--their looks and behaviours. Using the term "prostitutes" when referring to sex workers. If it was supposed to show more human side of a doctor, then I'd rather stay non-the-wiser and focused on more professional facade.

The Art of Binding People challenges many of our assumptions about mental health, as we follow nurses, doctors, and patients along the hospital corridors, we listen to their screams and silences, and we enter the lives of those living on both sides of the invisible, arbitrary line that separates the healthy from the sick.

We speak of doctors most often as heroes, martyrs, or victims. Drawing from forty years of experience working in an emergency psychiatric ward, Paolo Milone offers a more complex and more compelling picture. With prose at once direct and lyrical, he transports us inside Ward 77, where mental illness coexists with the ordinary lives of those who, at the end of their shifts, take their white coats off and have to remember to buy milk.

As an intensive care nurse, this book was fascinating yet unbelievably realistic. Thank you so much to the author - Paolo Milone and Daniela at @europaeditionsuk for the ARC.

Paolo Milone is a psychiatrist who worked on an emergency ward and treated many neurotics, depressives, schizophrenics, neurotics, addicts.

"I explain: I’m a kind of fireman. I’m called in when someone is so unwell that they can’t remember their own name. They are so unwell they can’t say where they come from, nor what has happened to them. They are so unwell that they don’t understand where they are. These people are lost, like in a fire or out at sea, and I go and find them. How do you do it? I improvise."

The book is a peculiar mix of fiction, memoir and essay, composed of many ultrashort chapters containing one or two sentence lessons/vignettes/experiences/conversations on psychiatry, suicide, psychosis.

"If you have never experienced psychiatric pain, do not say that it doesn’t exist. Thank the Lord and stop talking."

This is a topic I would normally avoid, but I am glad I read it. There are tough sections, but Milone does very well to make it accessible, explaining in a very humane, personal, open and respectful way what we know and don't know, what he can and cannot do.

The Art of Binding People
by Paolo Milone
Translated from the Italian by Lucy Rand

What a gem this turns out to be! Having recently read and enjoyed "The Night Interns" by Austin Duffy and "This is Going to Hurt" by Adam Kay, it appears I'm the target audience for doctor lit. Why is it so hilarious to read about the woes of young doctors as they attempt to become proficient in one of the more noble callings in an absurd profession? Enter the psychiatrist.

Paolo Milone worked as a psychiatrist for over forty years. In this smart, funny and engrossing memoir he introduces us to his clients over the years, his colleagues from the Mental Health Centre and Ward 77, the psychiatric emergency ward where he diagnosed, treated, medicated, and yes, sometimes bound, those that reckon with hallucination, vision, confabulation, delusion and delirium. In direct prose he addresses his clients with warmth, humour and compassion, and his colleagues in conspiratorial knowing. He circles back throughout to the ones who effect him and perhaps haunt him the most.

"Lucretia for a week you've been calling me four times a day, you leave me a note three times a day, you knock on my door twice a day, asking me to urgently certify inwriting that you are absolutely of sound mind. Lucrezia, it is the persistence with which you are asking that prevents me from doing it"

"Lucrezia, you've been calling me three times a day for three months, to make sure I'm alive. Lucrezia, continue like this and you will kill me."

"Lucrezia, you call me at midnight because you have nocturnal anxieties. Lucrezia, your nocturnal anxieties are stopping me from sleeping"

Most sections are barely a page long, some are barely as long as a meme quip. Interspersed with poems and lyrical reflections the result shows the deeply compassionate nature of the man and constant will to do right by his patients regardless of the effects on his outside life.

Ultimately uplifting, this is one of those books where, realising I was coming towards the end, I found myself slowing down more and more to make it last. This would be a great read for anyone who ever wondered if they were going mad, isn't that all of us?

Publication date: 25th May 2023
Thanks to #netgalley and #europaeditions for the ARC

This beautiful, poetic novel will stay with me for a long time. The Art of Binding People is a memoir of a life lived in psychiatry and it is brutal, honest, and the unique style that it is written in creates an extremely powerful impact on the reader.

This is a memoir, but it feels as immersive as a well-written fiction and some of the events of this writers life are hard to believe. There is tragedy but also a lot of love and hope and it is truly a beautiful insight into life working in a psychiatric ward.

This book is quite challenging in both style & topic. Each chapter is broken down into sections which vary in length & complexity. Some of these are particularly poignant and beautiful, passages that anyone who has suffered with mental health or felt loss, can connect with.

The prose is very fragmented, which makes sense for a topic on mental health. It also makes you wonder who it is that’s suffering with their mental health - just the patients or the author as well. This fragmented nature does make it hard to connect with the characters, they all seem just out of reach. This too makes sense with the nature of the topic. However this intangibility did affect my enjoyment of the book. The beautiful poetic sections will stay with me but overall this is a solid three stars for me.

An astonishing read a look into the mind of this author as he is a practicing psychiatrist .A rare raw look at his patients his dialogue with them his thoughts on treating them.I found this so well written a fascinating read.#netgalley #europabooks

Wow. This book was utterly beautiful. It didn't surprise me that the author has 40 years experience as a psychiatrist, as it really felt this book was written from the heart. He speaks so tenderly of patients and colleagues, openly sharing his doubts, his vulnerabilities and his absolute certainties. Having seen family members treated for schizophrenia Paolo Milone is the psychiatrist I would wish for them.

I’ve not read anything like this before or much about psychiatry but I was really glued to this book. Fascinating and so devastating. It felt like I was seeing something I shouldn’t.
The direct prose made it feel very vivid but at the same time I often felt a bit lost when reading about the lives on Ward 77, patients or staff. However, this didn’t feel like a problem and I could see myself reading this again in the future.

Each chapter leaves you with lots to think about and I’m again grateful for translated fiction and MH workers.

I found this book an odd set up and difficult to read. It is written in an odd fashion however saying that it still makes you think a lot,

This book is not an easy read, but is nonetheless an interesting look into some incredibly complicated and tricky conversations, in particular the nature of psychiatry.

In this book, Milone talks about his experiences in the field, often holding a light up to where it does not seem to work for patient or doctor, and also where it is too complicated to truly pin down.

It is unflinching, difficult, but fascinating.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.