Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See, Juliann Garey
Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See, Juliann Garey
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Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See

Author: Juliann Garey

Narrator: Dan Butler

Unabridged: 11 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/26/2012

Synopsis

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.

About Juliann Garey

Juliann Garey has sold original screenplays and television pilots to Sony Pictures, NBC, CBS, Columbia TriStar Television, and Lifetime TV. As a journalist she has edited and written for such publications as Marie Claire, Glamour, More, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post. She has received fellowships in fiction writing at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. Garey is a graduate of Yale and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

About Dan Butler

Dan Butler, audiobook narrator, actor, writer, director, and producer, has had major roles on and off Broadway and has appeared in numerous television shows, including Frasier, House, and Monk. He cowrote and directed Karl Rove, I Love You and has appeared in such feature films as Crazy, Stupid, Love; Silence of the Lambs; Enemy of the State; and Fixing Frank, among others.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on October 11, 2021

This book is horrifying in the details of a man's journey into madness. Garey writes so well, you feel his torment, his angst. Yet, at the same time it is hilariously funny....laugh out loud funny. The story is heartbreaking and very revealing about the nightmare of mental illness, particularly bipo......more

Goodreads review by Heather K (dentist in my spare time) on November 05, 2013

Wow, just wow. This book totally took me by surprise. I read this book for Net Galley but it was on my radar to read anyway. I am just shocked that this isn't a memoir but a work of fiction. The author did a masterful job of portraying a man struggling with manic-depression. The style of the book is......more

Goodreads review by Kathleen on February 04, 2013

This was not an easy book to read, but it was thoroughly engrossing. Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See is the story of Greyson Todd. Greyson is in the psych ward of a hospital getting electroconvulsive therapy as he takes us along on his ups and downs (way ups and way downs). Greyson, a bipolar for......more

Goodreads review by Rebecca on July 01, 2012

Loved this book. I usually don't read books that are about bipolar people/hermaphrodites/pioneers/stowaways/immigrant surgeons, whatever. But sometimes books that need to be marketed as if they are "about" one thing are much better than their marketing. Middlesex was certainly like this, and so is G......more

Goodreads review by Larry on February 19, 2019

I see I read this book nearly 4 1/2 years ago and gave it five stars. But for some reason I evidently didn’t write a review. I remember that at that time I had been diagnosed by a psychiatrist as being bipolar. I remember reading this book and thinking that I had got off pretty easily considering ho......more

Quotes

“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.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“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.” Millions

“A gripping tale of a man’s unraveling.” Real Simple

“You won’t be able to put down this exhilarating debut novel…Brave and touching.” Marie Claire

“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.” Huffington Post

“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.” Brian Yorkey, co-creator of the Tony Award-nominated Next To Normal

“Garey breathes life into an uncomfortable and often misunderstood subject and creates a riveting experience.” Kirkus Reviews

“Garey evokes in stark detail the torment and raw suffering of mental illness. A compelling read.” Library Journal (starred review)

“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.” Los Angeles Times

“[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.” NPR

Awards

  • ALA Notable Book
  • NPR’s Great Reads
  • Library Journal Editor’s Pick
  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
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