... like so many of the stories in this intimate and revelatory book, the truth of it is real but incomplete.

... written with an astonishing amount of attention and care.

Stands out by virtue of how successful she is in the attempt. In fact at moments it feels quite far from the fray, perhaps because...her pieces, even her sentences, tend to conclude ambivalently, and are driven throughout by a curiosity that resists its own moral and rhetorical instincts, forging narrative ones instead.

One of the pleasures of this book is its resistance to a clear and comforting verdict, its desire to dwell in unknowing. At every step, Aviv is nuanced and perceptive, probing cultural differences and alert to ambiguity, always filling in the fine-grain details. Extracting a remarkable amount of information from archival material as well as living interview subjects, she brings all of these people to life, even the two whom she never met. I zipped through each essay—propelled by curiosity—yet needed to take breaks between them, both to recover from the intensity of the human experience described and to sit with the implications of the argument Aviv is building, which suggests that it may be more harmful than helpful to see yourself the way doctors see you.

Aviv approaches her critiques obliquely and suggestively, through in-depth reports on individuals based on their letters, diaries, interviews with family members, friends, medical records, doctors, and, when possible, the subjects themselves.

Strangers to Ourselves is doggedly resistant to sounding definitive. Instead, it is insistent on ambivalence.

Aviv steps outside of these rigid explanations to paint more complex portraits of interiority.

The accounts are vivid, wrenching and ambitiously researched and include dispatches from the subjects’ voluminous diaries, blogs and unpublished memoirs.

... a subtle and penetrating investigation into how mental illness is diagnosed, and the ways in which the language used – far from neutral – moulds a patient’s innermost self, promising to explain who they are by weaving narratives that free and entrap.

... profoundly intelligent.

Lucid reporting and memoir.

The honesty and openness with which Aviv, now a New Yorker journalist, describes her childhood experience sets the tone for a book that captures with subtlety and empathy the complicated reality of mental illness.

... fascinating.

... well researched, quietly provocative book.

... a stunning book, offering sensitive case histories of people whose experiences of mental illness exceed the limits of psychiatric terminology, diagnosis and treatment.

... perceptive and intelligent.

... thought-provoking.