This collection of letters written by people with experience of depression to people still in the thick of it is available now for pre-order. The reviews here strongly suggest without actually saying so, that this isn’t a sit-down-and-read-all-in-one-go sort of book. It isn’t a novel; it’s real and it’s painful at times because the people who wrote the letters and pulled back the curtains on very personal experiences of their own are real. But its message is hope – everyone who wrote has been there and eventually found a safer place from which to speak. The depressions are different and the recoveries are different because the people are different. There’s probably something there for anyone in that black hole and feeling lost although it may not be the first letter, or any of the first several, or the middle one or the last, but it’s likely to be somewhere there just a page-turn away. And it may not be the same one the next time you look because you will have changed.

To my mind, it’s the complementary twin of Matt Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive, a profoundly moving autobiographical account of his own depression and recovery which can be read like a novel. Have both. Give both. Keep both. On the shelf, by the bed, in the gap between the cushion and the arm of the sofa, Wherever is close to hand.