i have lots and lots of thoughts on this book.
firstly, while it isn’t a favorite of my year, i definitely liked it. cannot speak to how accurate the bipolar rep is though
what this book reminded me a lot of is what ive mentally nicknamed “the kurt cobain problem”: when an artist dies and people just,, sort of forget that they were a real person with likes and dislikes and good and bad qualities and an entire life. and when people then attribute meaning and symbolism to their art that may or may not have been there in the first place (and admittedly, ive done this! would like to think im a lot better now but man you would not have wanted to meet 14-year-old me and my manic street preachers tumblr fan account back in 2020. it was Bad).
the plot definitely slowed down in this between the first 20% and last 20%, it felt like we were just reiterating the same points over and over. but the writing style was very to-the-point and i like that so that kept me pretty interested