Cliffs of Despair: A Journey to the Edge

by Tom Hunt and Dina Nayeri

Beachy Head is a bit of quintessential Englanda seaside promontory where green pastures roll to the edge of chalk cliffs, a place of sheep and wind and ineffable beauty. But it is also a major... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375507159
• ISBN13: 9780375507151
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Five Stars

This book was beautifully written. It was honest, insightful, and just a pleasure to read. I got caught up in the experience of it all. The topic is one that is demonized and contested. Hunt put himself out in the open. And I really enjoyed it.

From Despair to Hope

I'm rereading Cliffs of Despair, and am as awed by it now as when I first read the opening scene. It's a deeply moving and personal account of the author's attempt to understand more about a death in the family, his response to it, and about suicide itself. Having read months earlier about a popular suicide destination in England called Beachy Head, Hunt is driven to visit the place after his brother-in-law takes his own life at the age of twenty-one. His book reports in unflinching detail his conversations with police, cab drivers, members of the coastguard's rescue and recovery teams, and even a palm reader. Initially hesitant to articulate the reason for his visit, Hunt's sincerity and purity of purpose eventually earn him the trust and confidence of those most intimately acqainted with Beachy Head's allure. The result is a well-researched, sensitive, carefully written book that somehow avoids the risk of exploiting the lives and deaths it documents. I was touched and amazed by Hunt's compassion and integrity, his delicate use of humor, and by his willingness to reveal his own secrets along with those he discovers. I recommend this book to everyone, but especially to those who work or live with troubled adolescents, are interested in psychiatry, or who have been affected directly by suicide.

There's Nothing Like The Truth From A Superb Jouranlist

This is one of the greatest books ever written about suicide, and even more so, about the redemptive power of knowledge from a spectacualar journalist who is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Let's face it, no one likes to talk about it. But all ages, genders, from all walks of life often hit bottom with this alternative as seemingly their only way out. I cannot recall a more profoundly moving book that reaches into one's soul - and provides paradoxically a lifeline that one may need some day.

Compelling and Satisfying

I haven't read a book so satisfying on so many levels in a long time. It's perceptive, beautifully written, informative, compassionate and even, in places, funny. I couldn't put it down. For six hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was transported to the cliffs of Beachy Head and didn't want to leave.

Highly interesting and informative

This haunting visit to Beachy Head is thoroughly engrossing. It compellingly binds together the stupendous summit that draws the sufferers, surprising statistics on suicide, an intimacy with victims, survivors and kin, and the imp of the perverse. The accidental hiving off of chunks of cliff is as frightening as the call to abandon its stability. The book has lingered with me for days.