Underneath the Lemon Tree: A Memoir of Depression and Recovery by Mark Rice Oxley

Despite the recent flood of confessional books, laying out personal agonies like entrails on an altar of misery for interpretation by the public haruspecis, it still takes guts in this age of affluence to admit to personal failure. Depression is all too often regarded as a moral malfunction, even by the depressive who makes a massive effort to maintain a functioning persona in the teeth of mighty and debilitating pressures. Depression struck down Mark Rice-Oxley, a successful journalist and regular family man, coming up to his 40th birthday. He had first to understand what was happening to him, identify remedies and put in the necessary work for recovery. That’s to put it simply: the process of travelling through the depression and coming out the other side is difficult and different for every depressive. With candour for himself and compassion for others, Rice-Oxley becomes his own case study.