Lights On, Rats Out

by Cree LeFavour

Overview

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2017
“Lights On, Rats Out is unlike anything I’ve ever read—a powerfully, staggeringly honest book that is excruciating in places, and also completely haunting. LeFavour’s intimate account of her relationship with her psychiatrist is intensely compelling, forthright, and brave. Did he overstep? Was he somehow pulled in by her beyond what was therapeutically appropriate or helpful? This is a fascinating memoir in a category of its own.”—Dani Shapiro

As a young college graduate a year into treatment with a psychiatrist, Cree LeFavour began to organize her days around the cruel, compulsive logic of self-harm: with each newly lit cigarette, the world would drop away as her focus narrowed on the blooming release of pleasure-pain as the burning tip was applied to an unblemished patch of skin. Her body was a canvas of cruelty; each scar a mark of pride and shame.

In sharp and shocking language, Lights On, Rats Out brings us closely into these years. We see the world as Cree did—turned upside down, the richness of life muted and dulled, its pleasures perverted. The heady thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. Adam N. Kohl—whose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzing—comes to be the only bright spot in her days.

Lights On, Rats Out describes a fiercely smart and independent woman’s charged attachment to a mental health professional and the dangerous compulsion to keep him in her life at all costs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802125965
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Cree LeFavour is the author of several cookbooks, including the James Beard Award nominated Fish, published by Chronicle Books. She has Ph.D. in American Studies and taught writing at New York University.

Editorial Reviews

Lights On, Rats Out is told up-close and in the writerly equivalent of slow motion, as though the narrator is still trying to figure out what everything means and how to fit it altogether. LeFavour's tale is a gritty one, and requires a certain corresponding grit in the reader. It is, among other things, a love story about a dedicated and gifted analyst and his difficult but equally gifted patient. For those who have wondered what actually takes place in therapy, this book provides a sense of the granular way in which change can take place. We are so used these days to instant diagnoses, even for complex, many-tiered problems, that it comes as something of a shock to read an account of nearly gothic suffering that does not provide easy answers or assign ready blame, preferring instead to circle its own mysteries…This is a courageous and unsettling memoir, infused with humor as well as pain, and marked throughout by a survivor's wry insight.

The New York Times Book Review - Daphne Merkin

★ 03/27/2017
Cookbook author (Fish) LeFavour’s debut memoir is a riveting exploration of a period in her early 20s when she habitually burned herself with cigarettes and developed a deeply intimate relationship with her psychiatrist. LeFavour’s youth was unconventional; her father became a well-known chef, money was not an issue, and the family traveled extensively before buying a home in Sun Valley, Idaho. When she was 13, LeFavour’s parents divorced (her mother, an alcoholic, ran off; her father relocated to California) and she and her sister were left to manage for years without adult supervision. Eventually she attended Vermont’s Middlebury College, and after graduating she began seeing a psychiatrist, here given the pseudonym Dr. Kohl. He helped her come to grips with bulimia, social disconnection, and a persistent urge for self-harm (her arms bore the scars of 100 self-inflicted wounds). The memoir, based in part on medical records relinquished at the final session with Dr. Kohl, chronicles LeFavour’s deepening relationship with him; he served as her confidante and a “quasi” father figure, and she eventually fell in love with him. They both maintained professional boundaries and she honored her agreement to commit herself to a psychiatric hospital when she couldn’t stop the burning. When the “lights” finally came on for this profoundly troubled young woman, she writes, she was able to release her shame and pain, and embrace a future of possibilities. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2017, An Amazon Best Book of the Month

Praise for Lights On, Rats Out

"[LeFavour] exhibits a rare willingness to take the reader into difficult and sometimes unpleasant territory...a riveting account of a “particular kind of crazy” — namely, the damaged and self-damaging young woman she once was...This is a courageous and unsettling memoir, infused with humor as well as pain, and marked throughout by a survivor’s wry insight."—Daphne Merkin, New York Times Book Review

"This gritty account of a woman’s struggle with self-abuse describes nearly gothic suffering. It is also a love story about a dedicated and gifted analyst and his difficult but equally gifted patient. Courageous and unsettling, LeFavour’s memoir is infused with humor and wry insight as well as pain."—Radhika Jones, New York Times, "11Books We Recommend this Week"

"Shockingly intimate."—People Magazine

"In her memoir of battling mental illness, Cree LeFavour uses the force of her blisteringly stark, mesmerizingly self-aware prose to not only unearth her own demons, but also equip the reader with the language to articulate our own as well."—Harper's Bazaar.com, "7 New Books You Need to Read in August"

"Eloquent, irreverent, graphically precise."—Boris Kachka, Vulture, "8 Books You Need to Read in August"

"A brave and honest memoir...sad and piercingly smart, making for an unforgettable read."—Bookreporter

“In startling, beautiful language reminiscent of Plath, LeFavour details her horrific, masochistic impulses. In one chapter when LeFavour’s sanity wavers, “splendid women” like Plath, Sexton, and Porcia Catonis appear in the psychiatric ward, acting both as ominous harbingers and beacons of hope. A searing, brilliant memoir revealing the therapeutic process and its ability “to turn our ghosts into ancestors.” —Booklist (starred review)

"A searingly eloquent and intelligent memoir."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Riveting...The memoir, based in part on medical records relinquished at the final session with [her psychiatrist] Dr. Kohl, chronicles LeFavour’s deepening relationship with him; he served as her confidante and a “quasi” father figure, and she eventually fell in love with him. They both maintained professional boundaries and she honored her agreement to commit herself to a psychiatric hospital when she couldn’t stop the burning. When the “lights” finally came on for this profoundly troubled young woman, she writes, she was able to release her shame and pain, and embrace a future of possibilities.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A harrowing, beautiful, searching, and deeply literary memoir. In these pages, we watch Cree LeFavour evolve from a wounded (and wounding) lost girl to a woman who can at last regard her existence with a modicum of mercy and forgiveness. To see somebody trade in her life of suffering and isolation for a life of shaky (but authentic) self-compassion is a gift. LeFavour takes no easy shortcuts on her path to healing—only because there are no easy shortcuts. Nor does she ever relinquish a molecule of her blindingly sharp intelligence as she guides us expertly through the mazes of her broken, youthful mind....I admire this book immensely—and its author even more.”—Elizabeth Gilbert

“Lights On, Rats Out is unlike anything I’ve ever read—a powerfully, staggeringly honest book that is excruciating in places, and also completely haunting. LeFavour’s intimate account of her relationship with her psychiatrist is intensely compelling, forthright, and brave. Did he overstep? Was he somehow pulled in by her beyond what was therapeutically appropriate or helpful? This is a fascinating memoir in a category of its own.”—Dani Shapiro

“With chilled, unflinching precision, in Lights On, Rats Out, LeFavour lays bare her struggles with self-mutilation, chronicling a terrifying clash between mind and flesh. A vivid, unsettling, and powerful read.”— Jonathan Miles

"In Lights On, Rats Out, Cree LeFavour writes of her struggles t feel she deserves a place in this world. This is one of the best books I have ever read about the drive for equilibrium and how transformative peace can be both for ourselves and our children."— Darcey Steinke

“Cree LeFavour's memoir of self-mutilation and temporary insanity isn't for the faint of heart. Rather, it's for anyone who's ever been too scared to feel or too hurt to register pain—in other words, all of us. I don't think I've ever read a more hopeful, searingly intelligent book about the distances we're capable of traveling as we find our way back to the light.”—Adam Ross

From the Publisher

08/01/2017
Powerful and troubling, cookbook author LeFavour's (Fish) memoir of temporary insanity and eventual redemption is a voyeuristic portrayal of a young woman's descent into a state of self-destruction that eventually culminates in a stint in a mental institution. Bulimia, self-mutilation, and transference are central factors in the author's story; the detail in which the pleasure/pain of burning is described reveals much about the writer's mental state and serves as a harrowing, realistic representation of the compulsion to self-harm. The narrative often reads as a stream-of-consciousness, in which a collection of thoughts, anxiety, and mental lists add an extra layer of truth to the representation of personality disorder and the stages that mark the progress of a mental breakdown. At times narcissistic, LaFavour's voice can be exasperating. Her privilege is evident, and her story may not resonate with all readers. Moreover, the descriptions of self-harm may be triggers for some audiences. VERDICT Combining medical records with a deeply personal narrative, this unique exploration of mental health and therapy deserves a place among memoirs such as Susanna Kay's Girl, Interrupted, and Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation.—Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib.

Library Journal

★ 2017-05-25
A noted cookbook writer tells the story of her young-adulthood battles with mental illness and self-harming behaviors.Abandoned and neglected by her mother and father when she was just 13, LeFavour (Pork: More than 50 Heavenly Meals that Celebrate the Glory of Pig, Delicious Pig, 2014, etc.) grew up virtually parent-free. Though never wanting for money, she began to experience depression in high school; in the years after college, her symptoms, which included irrational numerical fixations and bulimia, began to worsen. When the author was 24, she started therapy with a Vermont psychiatrist named Dr. Adam Kohl. The more she opened up, the more she discovered that she "wanted all of him—or none." Taking masochistic pleasure in how "special" her own self-loathing made her feel, LeFavour began inflicting cigarette burns all over her body, which she only showed to Kohl. The marks were "[their] secret" but also a way for LeFavour to "punish" the psychiatrist for "activating my desire for him." Their therapy sessions devolved into a contest of wills, with the doctor refusing to see an increasingly distraught LeFavour if she continued to self-harm. Told that their sessions would go on only if she went to a psychiatric hospital, the author voluntarily committed herself to Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Maryland, where she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. When she returned to therapy with Kohl, they probed her taste for humiliation, which she satisfied with damaged men or those who, like the doctor, were unavailable to her. Working against demons and an inner tyrant that often threatened to overwhelm her, LeFavour learned the lessons of self-forgiveness that helped her heal. Meticulously constructed from detailed physician notes and her own journals, the book is both disturbing and deeply cathartic. As LeFavour explores the destructive relationship between her mind and body in tandem with her unhealthy, quasi-erotic attachment to her psychiatrist, she lays bare the human hunger—no matter how perverse—for acceptance and love. A searingly eloquent and intelligent memoir.

Kirkus Reviews