Book Review: BETTER: A MEMOIR ABOUT WANTING TO DIE by Arianna Rebolini
- elichvar
- Aug 19
- 6 min read
Arianna Rebolini
Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die
HarperCollins / April 2025 / 352 pp / $30 Hardcover
Reviewed by Hope Elizabeth Kidd / August 2025
When I first saw the subtitle of Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die, I wasn’t horrified that someone would write an entire book about feeling suicidal. I was drawn to it, fascinated. As someone who has battled depression for more than half her life and who has been suicidal, I had a personal stake in reading this book. I could hardly wait to hear Rebolini’s take on the topic. But this memoir is far more than a recounting of her suicidal ideations, her hospitalization, and her mental health care. Rebolini researched exhaustively: ending the memoir are three pages listing some of the books and media she consumed while writing Better, plus seventeen pages of notes for actual references in the book. Combining the research with her experience, Rebolini explores familial mental illness, contemplates motherhood as a person with suicidal ideations, critiques mental health care in the United States, examines writers and artists who have committed suicide, and brings up important questions to consider. The result is a beautifully vulnerable memoir about an often-undiscussed topic, seasoned with a little literary analysis and social criticism.
Rebolini has had suicidal ideation since childhood. “[Suicidality] has been with me,” she writes, “part of me, almost as far back as my memory reaches. . . . And so my death is a near-constant presence in my life, traveling back and forth on a spectrum between comfort and despair.” Her first (and only) attempt was at age twenty, overdosing on over-the-counter medications. At age thirty-one, when the urge to commit suicide became too strong, she called a friend, who agreed she should go to the hospital. “It was the first time I knew I would do it,” she writes. “I needed to follow through on one thing, and that thing, eventually, inevitably, had to be either the hospital or the pills. Why not the hospital? Why not this morning?” Rebolini’s partner helped her check into a hospital, and this period of hospitalization is where Chapter One begins.
As a way of understanding her own preoccupation with suicide, Rebolini has long been interested in studying other writers who have committed suicide, including Virginia Woolf, Édouard Levé, Sylvia Plath, and a poet friend, Alice Alsup. She examines their writings (notably The Journals of Sylvia Plath and Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary), searching for warning signs. Rebolini references Plath throughout the memoir, sometimes referring to her as Plath, sometimes Sylvia, showing the deep connection she feels to the writer’s struggle with depression.
Rebolini also writes about the mental illness in her family of origin, particularly her brother, also prone to suicidal thinking, who has had many battles in the quest to be “better.” Which leads to one of the central questions of the memoir: What does it mean to be “better,” anyway? Rebolini questions whether it is possible for a repeatedly suicidal person to be better: “Not better as in improved, but better as in finished, as in done with all of that.” She wonders if there is such a thing as permanent recovery and if a suicidal person can accept his suicidality as part of himself, thereby maintaining his autonomy (as opposed to feeling victimized by it). Can the suicidal person’s loved ones accept it?
As a person who has faced suicidality off and on for twenty-eight years, I find this idea incredibly comforting. If I can accept that perhaps I will occasionally have suicidal ideations for the rest of my life, but use tools for addressing those desires (like taking antidepressants, having regular psychiatry appointments, getting sunlight every day), then perhaps it means my entire personhood isn’t broken. Rather, it means I have a loose piece that I watch out for and sometimes need to glue back into place.
Better includes a chapter discussing how we label and talk about depression and suicide. For example, by saying someone “died by suicide,” are we actually removing that person’s agency, the agency by which she took her own life? Here emerges another central question: Is depression who we are or something that happens to us? Rebolini prefers to hold onto her autonomy on this point: “It’s Jordan [her brother]’s depression, but couldn’t it also be him? Couldn’t it also be me? Shouldn’t we be the ones to decide?” She understands that loved ones fear a suicidal person might actually follow through on their desires and might try to persuade them that their desire is an illusion and will soon dissipate. She goes on, “I understand why we hold this assurance with a death grip: This is not you. This is a symptom. But what if it’s both?”
Rebolini explores mental health care in the United States, showing how it is not easily accessible to most; over five pages in the Notes section include references she researched for this chapter, including statistics from websites including the American Psychological Association and the Trevor Project. One anecdotal example of inaccessibility is when Rebolini spent almost ninety minutes on the phone with insurance, ready with Current Procedural Terminology codes (codes used for billing purposes) and tax ID numbers for a provider, in order to find out the allowed amount for the mental health service to know if she could even afford the service using her insurance’s out-of-network benefits. This example doesn’t even touch the difficulties faced by those without mental health coverage. Furthermore, Rebolini notices added barriers to accessing mental health care among BIPOC communities. For example, referencing a 2023 article from the Association of American Medical Colleges, she explains that depressed white teens often present as melancholic, making it easier to spot, while among Black youths, depression often manifests as anger. It may go undiagnosed for years, giving it the chance to morph into suicidality.
Threaded throughout the memoir is Rebolini’s desire to be a mother. She knew she wanted to be a mother but worried about passing along mental unwellness to her offspring. Nor did she want to be a mother who killed herself, leaving her child alone. With support from her husband and her therapist of many years, Rebolini did have a son, who was five years old in the pages of the book. Despite a deep love for him, she still has times of suicidal ideation, but as she had suspected before becoming pregnant, her son’s life helps tether her to earth.
What I appreciate most about this memoir is Rebolini’s vulnerability about her suicidal thinking, an often taboo topic. There will be those who criticize her choice to become a mother in spite of having suicidality (there are always people ready to criticize mothers). But I believe her choice to write about her mental health is one of strength, claiming her own power and personhood. It’s as if with this book she proclaims, “Here I am. I am prone to depression and suicidality. They’re part of me, and I treat them with mental health care. Having suicidality doesn’t mean I’m not a good mother. I am a good, strong, and loving mother.” Because I am also a mother in spite of depression and occasional suicidal ideation, I cannot express how validating and uplifting Better was for me to read. Many of her words resonated deeply; reading it made me feel less alone in my own mental health struggles.
For any reader, Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die can provide insight into the depressed and suicidal person’s thinking. With depression and suicidality rampant in America, we need this book. We should prioritize continuing to open the conversation about mental health, normalizing depression as an ailment that requires treatment, and parents with depression and suicidality need validation that we can still do a good job in our parenting. This book is a fantastic place to start.
Writing about suicidality with both frankness and tenderness is a narrow line, but Rebolini achieves an ideal balance, making it accessible for both readers with depression and suicidality and those without. One important caveat: be aware of your own mental state. If you are feeling particularly vulnerable, this may not be the book for you at this time.
Hope Elizabeth Kidd lives in New York City with her husband, five children, and an assortment of pets. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the City College of New York, where she worked as an editor for Promethean, City College’s literary journal. She enjoys writing about motherhood, mental health, and body image and has completed a memoir manuscript about her childhood in Zimbabwe. Hope has been published in MUTHA magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, The ManifestStation, Good River Review, and the print anthology Fish Gather to Listen. She is the co-host of Must Love Memoir, a monthly reading series in NYC dedicated to nonfiction. You can catch her on Instagram at @hopeelizabethwrites.