In preparation for the movie released in late December 2012, I decided to give Matthew Quick's Silver Linings Playbook a read, and I have to say, this story was something I absorbed myself in right from the beginning.
SLP tells the story of Pat Peoples, who was just released from a mental hospital and is intent on changing himself to win back his wife Nikki. He means well, but anger often gets the best of him and all he wants to do is please the people he loves most.
Quick does an excellent job of delving into the mind of a very confused, emotionally unstable, obsessive-compulsive man whose daily routine consists of exercising and reading classic literature. Just his thought processes alone are intriguing and almost immediately draw the reader in.
"This kind of story could so easily have been maudlin and depressing but ... it is told with honesty and humor..." -Forbes.com
Forbes couldn't have been more right. An uplifting and heartwarming book, Silver Linings Playbook captures the meaning of happy endings and finding the silver linings in the "movie" of your life. Priorities, dedication, and relationships are some of the things Pat Peoples has to juggle, but he does so with such zaniness and humor that he keeps you cheering him on throughout the whole story.
Between thought-provoking situations and memorable characters, Matthew Quick has created a world more familiar and relatable than not, while dipping into the lives of very ordinary, yet unordinary people, and that's the genius of it all. He has written two other books: Boy 21, and Sorta Like a Rock Star, and his latest work, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, is due out in August 2013.
If you like books like The Catcher in the Rye or other books dealing with mental illness, then Silver Linings Playbook will definitely pull you in, adding that heartwarming touch to top it all off. Grab yourself a copy, then go catch the movie, directed by David O'Russell, in theaters December 2012.
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