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Matt Haig is the number one bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and six highly acclaimed novels for adults, including How to Stop Time, The Humans and The Radleys. As a writer for children and young adults he has won the Blue Peter Book Award, the Smarties Book Prize and has been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal. His work has been published in over forty languages. @matthaig1 matthaig.com
ALSO BY MATT HAIG
The Last Family in England
The Dead Fathers Club
The Possession of Mr Cave
The Radleys
The Humans
Humans: An A-Z
How to Stop Time
Notes on a Nervous Planet
CANONGATE
Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2015 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2015, Matt Haig
Extract from Notes on a Nervous Planet copyright © Matt Haig, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
For permissions credits please see here.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 508 3
eISBN 978 1 78211 509 0
Typeset in Granjon by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire.
For Andrea
Contents
A note, before we get fully under way
Why depression is hard to understand
A conversation across time – part one
Things people say to depressives that they don’t say in other life-threatening situations
Feeling the rain without an umbrella
A visit
Boys don’t cry
Cherry blossom
Unknown unknowns
The brain is the body – part one
Psycho
Jenga days
Warning signs
Demons
Existence
