Reading this book is what I imagine going mad feels like. And I mean that in the most honest and awestruck way possible. 

You know those thoughts you have when you are trying to fall asleep? There, in the dark, you question everything; mundane topics take on a new weight, a new depth. And as you are slipping into sleep, you lose an element of coherence but the thoughts still remain. Soon, you can't tell what is dream and what is thought (if a differentiation can even be made); what is thought and what is real. If a thought is had, if the thought exists, doesn't that make the thought real? Does that make its contents real as well?

Hold that experience in your mind, and then imagine someone has filled 442 pages with that feeling. Some of the words are preserved there, yes, but mostly the feeling of it. That is Island of the Mad. 

The story (though its role is so minimal it is almost superfluous) is of a hunchbacked man named Ambrose who sets off on a journey to Venice to find a journal he knows nothing about at the request of someone he barely knows. Once there, he makes his way to the small island of San Servolo, where, while rummaging through a drawer, he finds a notebook full of letters and notes from two of the island's former inhabitants - a woman with a rare genetic illness and an epileptic man. The plot is the most concrete element of the book, something our minds can adhere to while everything else seems to be spiraling out of control, but it definitely isn't the focal point.

 I don't even know where to begin describing this book to you all... Half the time I didn't know what was happening. The entire time, it took my breath away. 

With a simple sentence, Sheck brings into sharp relief concepts that I've never thought to question or contemplate. How the gaps between the neurons in our brains predispose us to isolation in our thoughts and lives. The arbitrary structure of sentences and our need to end them. The nature of kindness - what it is and the power it wields. Our language itself: 

"Then once again it struck me how the word 'alone' derives from 'all' and 'one' as if it holds within its core a silent, unacknowledged sharing."

"'Care' -- at first the word seems clear, filled with generosity and goodness--... 'To take care of, to look after.'...'The charging of the mind with anything.'...'An inclination to or for.'...But then like anyone's lost or fading sight--like mine, it complicates itself, darkens and grows heavy: 'From the Germanic; bed of trouble, sickness, grief.' 'Mental suffering and sorrow.' 'The dress of mourning.' 'Burdened state of mind.' Why must words unhinge themselves--inclination turning into sorrow, charging blackening into mourning? Exploded particles of syllables releasing strife and contradiction."

Island of the Mad is gorgeously written and full of moments of deep introspection and speculation. Dark, mysterious, poetic and utterly confounding. To read it is to feel one is attempting to swim through muddied waters - muddied waters that contain necessary truths. Waters that, once you emerge from the other side, you are grateful for having been allowed entrance into them.

Island of the Mad will go on sale December 13th and I highly recommend it to anyone whose looking for a book like nothing they've ever read before.