In-Store: Arianna Rebolini: Better w/ Emily Gould

Event guidelines:

• All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
• Tickets are limited to restrict capacity at our store, and each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/QzBCmRng1KI
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

A gutsy, riveting memoir that intimately explores suicide, its legacy in families, and the often cyclical, crooked path of recovery.

Why do so many people choose death—and take their lives by their own hands? How could anyone ever begin to understand what it feels like to want to die?

After a decade of therapy and a stint in a psychiatric ward to treat suicidal depression, Arianna Rebolini was “better.” She’d published her first book, enjoyed an influential, rewarding publishing job, and celebrated the birth of her first child. Yet the pull of suicide was still there. One night, during bath time, as her young son Theo lined the tub with toy cars, she began calculating how many pills she’d have to down to effectively end her life.

In Better, Arianna interweaves the story of her month-long period of crisis with decades of personal and family history, from her first cry for help in the fourth grade with a plastic knife, to her fears of passing down the dark seed of suicide to her own son, and her brother’s life-threatening affliction. To understand this dark desire, Arianna pored over the journals, memoirs, and writings of famous suicides, and eventually developed theories on what makes a person suicidal. Her curiosity was driven by the morbid, impossible need to understand what happens in the fatal moment between wanting to K*ll oneself and doing it—or, unthinkably, the moment between regretting the action and realizing it can’t be undone. Then her own brother became institutionalized, and Arianna realized that all of the patterns and trenchant insights could not crack the shell of his annihilating depression.

A harrowing intellectual and emotional odyssey marked by remarkable clarity and compassion, Better is a tour through the seductive darkness of death and a life-affirming memoir. Arianna touches on suicide’s public fallout and its intensely private origins as she searches for answers to the profound question: How do we get better for good?

Arianna Rebolini is a writer from New York. She is the co-author, with Katie Heaney, of the novel Public Relations. She lives in Queens with her husband, son, and two cats.

Emily Gould is a Features Writer at New York Magazine and her novels include Perfect Tunes and Friendship.

Host or Publisher Books Are Magic