Daphne Merkin’s This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression is a powerful, unflinching exploration of the author’s lifelong struggle with clinical depression. Published in 2017, this memoir is a profound contribution to the literature on mental illness—not just as a confessional but as a lens through which to understand the complexity, stigma, and emotional turbulence of living with depression. Merkin, a celebrated literary critic and essayist, brings both intellectual clarity and raw honesty to a subject that remains shrouded in misunderstanding.
In This Close to Happy, Merkin does more than recount her experiences; she confronts the internal and external forces that have shaped her mental health. With literary finesse and emotional courage, she invites readers into the shadowy recesses of her psyche. This memoir is not a how-to manual for recovery but a nuanced reckoning with despair, familial dysfunction, identity, and the elusive search for emotional peace.
A Life Lived in the Shadow of Depression
From the outset, Merkin situates her depression not as a temporary affliction, but as a defining feature of her life. She describes her condition as a “predatory thing,” an ever-present force that has trailed her since childhood. Born into a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family in Manhattan, Merkin experienced both privilege and profound emotional neglect. Her parents—intellectually formidable but emotionally remote—failed to provide the kind of warmth or understanding that might have mitigated her suffering.
What distinguishes Merkin’s narrative from many mental health memoirs is her refusal to romanticize or neatly package her condition. Her depression is messy, persistent, and often resistant to treatment. She chronicles multiple hospitalizations, electroconvulsive therapy, countless therapists, and an evolving regimen of medications. The memoir makes clear that even in moments of relative stability, the specter of depression never fully disappears.
Merkin’s story challenges the narrative arc many readers expect: suffering, diagnosis, treatment, recovery. Instead, she presents a circular, at times stagnant journey—one that mirrors the true nature of chronic depression. There are no tidy resolutions, only moments of respite and reflection. This honesty, though at times harrowing, is what gives the book its emotional resonance.
The Role of Family and Upbringing
A central thread in This Close to Happy is Merkin’s exploration of her family dynamics and their impact on her mental health. Her portrayal of her parents—particularly her cold and punishing mother—is both scathing and heartbreaking. Merkin depicts a household in which emotional expression was stifled and children were treated as burdens rather than individuals with needs and desires.
Her analysis of these early experiences is not simplistic; she does not suggest that her family caused her depression outright. Instead, she illustrates how her environment exacerbated a condition that may have had genetic or biochemical roots. The emotional deprivation she suffered, particularly during her time in a disciplinary boarding school, contributed to her sense of isolation and unworthiness—feelings that are hallmark features of depressive thinking.
What is striking is Merkin’s ambivalence toward her family. She is at once critical and yearning, seeking understanding and love even as she exposes their failures. This duality adds psychological depth to the memoir and reflects the real-life complexities of familial bonds. Her relationship with her mother, in particular, is a tangle of resentment, longing, and despair—a relationship that readers with complicated parental dynamics may find painfully familiar.
Depression in the Cultural and Literary Landscape
Merkin is uniquely positioned to critique how depression is represented in literature and popular culture. As a writer and critic, she brings a keen awareness of the historical and cultural contexts that shape our understanding of mental illness. Throughout the book, she references the likes of William Styron, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Woolf—artists who also grappled with the demons of depression.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its interrogation of the myth of the “tortured artist.” Merkin is skeptical of the romanticization of mental illness as a byproduct of creative genius. While she acknowledges the introspective nature of depression may enhance certain artistic sensibilities, she is clear-eyed about its toll. There is nothing glamorous about suicidal ideation or the inability to get out of bed. Creativity, she argues, does not flourish in the depths of despair—it flickers in spite of it.
Merkin also critiques the commodification of wellness and the often simplistic portrayals of mental health recovery in self-help culture. She resists the temptation to offer easy answers or inspirational platitudes, which gives the book a sobering integrity. Depression, in her telling, is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be managed—a reality many readers with similar struggles will find validating.
A Memoir that Speaks the Unspeakable
What makes This Close to Happy stand out is its unflinching willingness to speak the unspeakable. Merkin writes candidly about her suicidal thoughts, her time in psychiatric wards, and her experiences with self-harm. These admissions are never sensationalized; rather, they are delivered with a kind of quiet fortitude that underscores the gravity of her experience.
She also addresses the profound shame that often accompanies mental illness, particularly in a society that prizes productivity, happiness, and self-sufficiency. Merkin’s shame is multilayered: it stems from her failure to “snap out of it,” from the burden she feels she places on loved ones, and from the internalized stigma that even someone as intellectually astute as she cannot fully escape.
But there is also a quiet triumph in her writing. The very act of articulating these experiences—of putting them into language—is a form of resistance. By writing this memoir, Merkin asserts her right to be seen and heard, even in the throes of depression. She gives voice to the many who suffer in silence, and in doing so, transforms private pain into public testimony.
In This Close to Happy, Daphne Merkins has crafted a memoir that is both deeply personal and universally resonant. It is a courageous reckoning with a lifelong affliction, but more than that, it is an invitation to think differently about what it means to live with depression. With intellectual rigor and emotional honesty, Merkin offers no easy solutions—but she offers something just as important: empathy, complexity, and the assurance that even in darkness, one is not alone.
