Lights On, Rats Out: A Memoir

"A harrowing, beautiful, searching, and deeply literary memoir. In these pages, we watch Cree LeFavour evolve from a wounded (and wounding) lost girl to a woman who can at last regard her existence with a modicum of mercy and forgiveness...a story of true self-salvation and transformation."--Elizabeth Gilbert As a young college graduate a year into treatment with a psychiatrist, Cree LeFavour's began to organize her days around the cruel, compulsive logic of self-harm: with each newly lit cigarette, the world would drop away as her focus narrowed to an unblemished patch of skin calling out for attention and the fierce, blooming release of pleasure-pain as the burning tip was applied to the skin. Her body was a canvas of cruelty; each scar a mark of pride and shame. In sharp and shocking language, Lights On, Rats Out brings us closely into these years, allowing us to feel the pull of a stark compulsion taking over a mind. We see the world as Cree did--turned upside down, the richness of life muted and dulled, its pleasures perverted. The heady, vertiginous thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. X--whose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzing--comes to be the only bright spot in her mental solitude. Her extraordinary access to and inclusion of the notes kept by Dr. X during treatment offer concrete evidence of Cree's transformation over 3 years of therapy. But it is her own evocative and razor-sharp prose that traces a path from a lonely and often sad childhood to her reluctant commitment to and emergence from a psychiatric hospital, to the saving refuge of literature and eventual acceptance of love. Moving deftly between the dialogue and observations from psychiatric records and elegant, incisive reflection on youth and early adulthood, Lights On, Rats Out illuminates a fiercely bright and independent woman's charged attachment to a mental health professional and the dangerous compulsion to keep him in her life at all costs.

About the Author :
Cree LeFavour is the author of several cookbooks, including the James Beard Award nominated Fish, published by Chronicle Books. She has Ph.D. in American Studies and taught writing at New York University.

Review :
Praise for LIGHTS ON, RATS OUT: "LeFavour's debut memoir is a riveting exploration of a period in her early 20s . . . The memoir, based in part on medical records relinquished at the final session with [her psychiatrist] Dr. Kohl, chronicles LeFavour's deepening relationship with him." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A harrowing, beautiful, searching, and deeply literary memoir. In these pages, we watch Cree LeFavour evolve from a wounded (and wounding) lost girl to a woman who can at last regard her existence with a modicum of mercy and forgiveness. To see somebody trade in her life of suffering and isolation for a life of shaky (but authentic) self-compassion is a gift. LeFavour takes no easy shortcuts on her path to healing--only because there are no easy shortcuts. Nor does she ever relinquish a molecule of her blindingly sharp intelligence as she guides us expertly through the mazes of her broken, youthful mind. It is sometimes difficult to read of the pain she inflicted upon herself when she was young--but life is sometimes difficult to live, and we must all be honest about that. LeFavour is nothing if not honest as she tries to explain (and to comprehend for her own purposes) why a beautiful, gifted young woman would have gone so far out of her way to injure herself. In so doing, she ultimately offers us a story of true self-salvation and transformation, told in such a way as I've never quite seen it told before. I admire this book immensely--and its author even more.--Elizabeth Gilbert "With chilled, unflinching precision, in Lights On, Rats Out, Lefavour lays bare her struggles with self-mutilation, chronicling a terrifying clash between mind and flesh. A vivid, unsettling, and powerful read.-- Jonathan Miles "Cree LeFavour's memoir of self-mutilation and temporary insanity isn't for the faint of heart. Rather, it's for anyone who's ever been too scared to feel or too hurt to register pain--in other words, all of us. I don't think I've ever read a more hopeful, searingly intelligent book about the distances we're capable of traveling as we find our way back to the light."--Adam Ross