Nelson Erlick’s TO RECLAIM A LIFE is a difficult, moving read. It tells the story of Richard, a man who suffers from bipolar disorder and is burdened by inexpressible guilt for having caused the breakup of his marriage. This is the result of what he calls “The Cycle,” a continual to-ing and fro-ing between periods of more or less stable behavior. His adult son who never looks him up (“an angry and depressed man. Like me”). Having spent two years after his ex-wife’s death searching (at her insistence) for meaning in a life he already felt to be empty without her, Richard realizes nothing has changed. To him (and to “Knot,” the name he gives to his irascible internal monologue), his life is still as pointless as it was then. The question now: Does he get busy living, or get busy dying?
The novel is presented as a sort of continuous back-and-forth between Richard and Knot. But in all important respects, Erlick’s subject is post-traumatic growth—or rather, the possibility of it. Under Knot’s influence, Richard relives key moments in his life and compulsively reimagines them: a type of intrusive thought taken to its furthest extreme. It's heartbreaking to see him suffering under the oppressive weight of memories of schoolyard bullying, or failing at exams as a result of an early manic episode, or momentary flashes of anger coming back to haunt him. Erlick has Richard and Knot play out multiple alternate scenarios for each failure or low point in Richard’s life. They branch out like the limbs of a decision tree, and Erlick pushes the point home by pointing out how many times Richard has to reimagine them: dozens, sometimes hundreds of times. It sounds like torment.
TO RECLAIM A LIFE feels like an honest and sincere psychological investigation of Richard, and Erlick plays adroitly with the unreliable narration. However, the structure does present obstacles. Because the novel consists of reassessments of inflection points in Richard’s life (although points of localized dramatic tension are numerous), the reader struggles to fit them into any larger framework where they have significance beyond the fact that Richard defines himself through them. It is not quite a matter of a lack of direction; Erlick clearly shows that Richard wants meaning, and wants to be free of the burdensome nature of his past errors. However, a book comprising nothing but this sort of introspection can be a challenge to read—except in unrelenting sympathy for the protagonist’s plight.
Tactfully written and affecting, Nelson Erlick's TO RECLAIM A LIFE is a heartbreaking account of one man's attempt to imbue his life with meaning in the face of mental illness.
~ Craig Jones for IndieReader