Maggie battles an enemy she cannot escape--her own brain.
University of Pittsburgh law student, Maggie Hovis, battles an enemy she cannot escape--her own brain. Her family calls her a drama queen. Her fiancé, Sam, moves out after she throws a shoe at his head. Maggie knows there is only one way to get him back--control her moods. So she takes the step most of her family is against: therapy.
After a diagnosis of Bipolar II Disorder, Maggie begins to investigate her family tree--which is plagued by mental illness and hidden relatives--and develops empathy for her deceased Great Aunt Ella, who lived her life in a mental institution. But Maggie's journey leads her into fear and insecurity, afraid she'll end up like Ella and never get Sam back. But what about Nick, her super-sexy old flame, who wants to reignite their passion? And does it even matter, anyway? Won't mental illness stop any man from loving her?
Excerpt
EXCERPT:
I got really pissed off when I read the description of depression. It was so sugar-coated. The webpage defined it as “a depressed mood, loss of pleasure, low energy and activity, feelings of guilt or worthlessness, and thoughts of suicide.”
Obviously, written by an over-educated, politically correct shrink. Not wanting to shock everyone in the library, I controlled my urge to scream out, This asshole should spend a few months inside my brain or let me write the damn definition:
Depression is a daily battle against an enemy that controls your only weapon—your ability to think. It’s a paralyzing pain of no known source that engulfs the entire body and soul. At times, violent self-loathing manifests as a fiery orange rage that surges through veins and arteries. As self-hatred gouges every cell in your body, a mortal enemy, named Uncontrollable Thought, commandeers your brain space.
This enemy, at the minimum, will try to convince you that you are God’s biggest and only mistake. But most of the time, Uncontrollable Thought stabs against the inside of your brain with taunts designed to convince you that your death would make the world a better place. Also, the saying, “an ocean full of tears,” is a gross understatement.
After that, I slammed the screen shut and huffed to myself.
Professional Reviews
Rochelle Weber, Roses & Thorns Reviews
ormat: Paperback
Being bi-polar and having gone through a couple of medicinal cocktails as well as several rounds on locked wards, I thought I knew a lot about my disease. But Ms. Sofayov has apparently done a lot more research than I have. In Defective I learned the meaning of a word I'd just drifted across and to which I had not paid much attention--hypomanic.
Like me, Maggie Hovis is a Bi-Polar 2 with Hypomania. Her disease does not manifest itself in long periods of great elation and creativity followed by long periods of deep depression bordering on catatonia. It shows up more as temper tantrums followed by abject apologies and then sleeping it off like an alcohol binge, and walking around like a zombie the rest of the time, sometimes taking to one's bed, sometimes just wallowing on the couch with the TV on, sometimes managing to put one foot in front of the other when absolutely required to survive, but with one's very own cloud surrounding one. Bi-polar 2's have brief flashes of the happy, creative kind of mania during which they may go somewhere fun or start a project, but they rarely finish these things. Maggie's boyfriend, Sam, referred to those times as "Beautiful Maggie."
[My first "book" was actually a collection of first chapters. I had about 300 pages of the beginnings of books, most of which I threw away. Goodness, I wish I'd kept them, but when one is sofa-surfing homeless, one can only carry so much luggage. You can't be a hoarder on your friends' couches.]
Maggie also has voices in her head telling her people will find out what a fraud she is when she does something right, or chiding her when she doesn't quite do something perfectly, just like mine. I just never realized they were part of my disease.
["A 3.25 grade point average. Couldn't make cum laude, could you? You're a failure." "Yeah, but to be fair, I did that one semester working full time while going to school in a wheel chair with my leg in a cast, and the CTA not-so-Special Services kept leaving me sitting in that cold corridor and caused me to miss three classes because they went to the wrong building in my office complex. If they'd missed me one more time, it would've been an automatic fail." "Lame excuse for getting two Bs that semester if you ask us." (My voices, not Maggie's. I call them The Committee.)]
The information about the disease is woven into a search for Maggie's family history, a manic obsession with getting her boyfriend back, and the reappearance of an old flame, all tempered with the words of her cousin. "Face it, Mags. We're defective. No one's ever going to love us."
Well, I loved Maggie Hovis. She and her family were fascinating, well-drawn, three dimensional characters--even Aunt Ella who died before Maggie was born. The villain in Defective was one with whom I am all too familiar and Ms. Sofayof definitely did her homework to bring it to life in dazzling HD-3D. I could not put this book down, except when it took me into my own head and I stopped to ruminate about my own struggles with B-P 2 and hypomania.
Yes, Maggie, I loved you. Enough to give you five [Yes, 5! Ignore the Committee and just say "Thank you."] Roses. Whether you're bi-polar, living with someone who is, not related to but curious about the disease, or just looking for a good romance with real demons, Defective is a great read.
Linda Thompson, Host of The Authors Show
There’s a stigma about mental illness that is like no other. When people are physically ill, everyone around them wants to help. When people are mentally ill, everyone around them wants to run away. In Defective, Susan Sofayov tells the story of Maggie, who not only was unaware she had Bipolar 2 until in her 20s, but that many others in her family were similarly afflicted. Defective is the story of her journey toward acceptance of herself and during the process teaches her family that this unfair disease should no longer be swept under the carpet. Sofayov has Bipolar 2, so while this book is written as a really good novel, it feels almost as if it’s a part of her story as well. When picking up a book about mental illness, one doesn’t expect to fall in love with the characters, doesn’t expect to laugh with them, and certainly doesn’t expect to get so caught up in their lives that you want to tell them that they truly are worthwhile human beings. I loved this book. It has helped me to understand one of my dearest friends who lives with mental illness and takes medication for it. I commend Sofayov for writing with such gut-wrenching honesty while teaching us all a great big lesson about compassion.
Denise Peterson
Maggie has struggled her whole life with moods swings and thinking that she was “defective.” After her fiancé leaves her, Maggie finally seeks treatment. Through counseling, Maggie learns to accept her illness and with medications is able to stabilize her moods. She comes to grips with her relationship ending and is eventually able to open her heart to someone who can accept her and her illness.
As a mental health professional who has worked for years with individuals with bipolar disorder, I felt that Susan Sofayov did an excellent job of accurately describing a person diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. She was able to distinguish the differences between bipolar I and bipolar II disorder in a way that was easy for the reader to understand. She effectively showed how a mood disorder can effect one’s relationships and the strong genetic component that contributes to the illness. This is a book I would recommend to someone diagnosed with this disorder.
Neurosis, a mental illness, affects everyone to a greater or lesser extent, yet most know little or nothing about it. This book reveals all, including incidence, signs and symptoms, cause, treatment and prevention, in lay language.
