Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story

by Mac McClelland Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

Overview

In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the lingering devastation of the earthquake. Back home, McClelland finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence. She can't sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she'd reported from, places where she thought she'd escaped emotionally unscathed. The bewilderment about this sudden loss of self-control is magnified by her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Haiti who despite their brief connection seems to have found a place in her confused heart.

With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland sets out to repair her broken psyche. Investigating her own illness and the history of PTSD, she discovers she is not alone: traumatic events have sweeping influence. While we most often connect it to veterans, PTSD is more often caused by other manner of trauma, and can even be contagious-close proximity to those afflicted can trigger it in those around them. As McClelland confronts the realities of her disorder, she learns to open her heart to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment.

Vivid, suspenseful, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is an unforgettable exploration of vulnerability and resilience, control and acceptance, and a compelling story of survival that expands the definition of what trauma is and offers powerful hope for those who need to work through it.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Sonia Faleiro

Irritable Hearts has hits and misses, but its striking candor will win McClelland the empathy she deserves.

Publishers Weekly

03/02/2015
This raw look at life with PTSD begins in Haiti in September 2010, where an earthquake has just shaken the very fabric of society. McClelland (A Twisted Trail) is one of the journalists who comes to Port-au-Prince to cover femicide and hate crimes, and she witnesses "something." She does not provide details, only writing that it has to do with rape, and that watching the "something" is the closest she's ever been to someone else's terror. Immediately afterward, she feels "a disembodied version of myself hovering somewhere behind me and to the left." This dissociation and a psychological numbness—so severe that she felt no emotion when her boyfriend, Nico, placed a rose on her chest and fed her strawberries in bed one day—are symptoms that strain her ability to function. McClelland pulls herself away from drinking binges with the help of Nico's steadiness, a somatic therapist's expertise, and the affirmation she receives from PTSD survivors who thank her for reporting on the illness. McClelland is writing this memoir for those survivors. She asks readers who haven't experienced dissociation and numbness to empathize with psychological conditions that they won't fully understand, and makes it easy to grant that request. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

Mac Mc Clelland has reported from crisis zones like Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but in her memoir Irritable Hearts she chronicles a crises she can't leave behind. McClelland learned she had post-traumatic stress disorder only hours after her return from Haiti, where she covered the aftereffects of the devastating January 2010 earthquake. She quickly came to understand the true cost of working in a zone of catastrophic hardship—even those who are not directly affected are damaged...In search of answers, McClelland executed an inward dive into her own history....In the process she draws a valuable portrait of what it is like to live with PTSD...When McClelland brings the subjects of her interviews into the frame of her book, it is then that Irritable Hearts reveals its own warm, beating heart... Irritable Hearts striking candor will win McClelland the empathy she deserves.” —Sonia Faliero, The New York Times Book Review

“That we are as strong as we are frail is the most profound of many truths rising out of Mac McClelland's astonishing Irritable Hearts. In her unforgettable memoir, McClelland begins to unravel her experience with PTSD while falling in love, traversing the globe and trying to understand both how the mind breaks and what it takes to heal in a world where all too often, we are constantly faced with how terribly vulnerable we are.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of AN UNTAMED STATE and BAD FEMINIST

“McClelland's deft, emotionally engaged memoir of her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder and her marriage to a man she met while reporting in Haiti is worth the wait...A vivid writer, building her trip to Haiti in sharp detail. And when she begins to fall apart afterward, her jagged emotions are genuinely harrowing to experience. As much as the love story at the heart of the book is a great romance, it's also a very funny one. McClelland is not the sort of person who needs to idealize either herself or the man who became her husband. It's a grown-up relationship story. And as a bonus, "Irritable Hearts" has a section on trauma and triggers that adds useful context to many of our present debates about discourse on the Internet.” —Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post

“In her second book...McClelland returns to terrain she has covered before to great acclaim and great criticism: herself-specifically, her battle with PTSD following a reporting trip to post-earthquake Haiti in 2010. She unsparingly recounts her struggles to cope with the lingering effects of trauma: nightmares, sobbing fits, alcoholism. McClelland weaves these details into the telling of her own unexpected love story, the charming and jagged particulars of which left me, by the book's end, unexpectedly exhausted.” —Ian Gordon, Mother Jones

Kirkus Reviews

2014-11-20
Sprawling memoir of an adventurous journalist's experiences with PTSD.National Magazine Award-nominated writer McClelland (For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma's Never-Ending War, 2010) considered herself accustomed to tough environments. However, on the ground in Haiti to cover the chaotic reconstruction following the 2010 earthquake, she witnessed acts of sexual violence (left largely unspecified) that instilled in her a severe case of PTSD, manifesting in jolting physical symptoms: "[f]lashbacks of the screaming incident I witnessed in Haiti burst into my head and I lay there, soft and failed, choking on instant hard sobs." Yet on the same trip, she had begun an improbable romance with Nico, a youthful French soldier. When she was back in the United States, they kept in touch via Skype, but McClelland's PTSD symptoms and attendant depression became more debilitating. When she first published writing about her experience, she was condemned for solipsism, yet she also heard from many fellow sufferers, ranging from women who'd encountered domestic violence to a growing community of PTSD-afflicted combat veterans and their families: "They were the collateral damage that didn't end with veterans, that everyone pretended didn't exist…." As McClelland tried to hang on to her relationship with Nico, she realized that her experiences were representative of a large, undiagnosed demographic of suffering. She discovered that an extensive, therapy-based treatment regimen (involving the examination of every trauma in her past, including the explosive dissolution of her parents' relationship) allowed her to move forward gradually, into accepting Nico's impulsive marriage proposal. The author takes a maximalist approach, focusing exhaustively on her own experiences and grim sensations (as well as those of the people she encounters), so the narrative feels progressively less focused while remaining compassionate and perceptive regarding this elusive malady. McClelland's candor and empathy are admirable, but this would have benefited from more editorial shaping.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173461438
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	02/24/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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