A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF 2025 (SO FAR)

"[Better] is both an act of defiant self-expression—an insistence on vulnerability over shame—and an academic exploration that asks seriously: 'What is making us want to die?'" —Chicago Review of Books

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

Why do so many people want to die—and how do we begin to understand what makes a person choose suicide?

After a decade of therapy and a stint in a psychiatric ward to treat suicidal depression, Arianna Rebolini began a challenging path to recovery and was “better.” She’d published her first book, enjoyed an influential, rewarding publishing job, and celebrated both a marriage and the birth of her first child. But none of it was enough to keep the desire to die at bay. One night, grappling with overwhelming debt and a pro-longed depression, she composed goodbye letters to her husband and son while they slept just feet away.

In Better, Arianna interweaves the story of this period of crisis with decades of personal and family history, exploring the nuances of generational trauma, 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, to her brother’s own life-threatening affliction. To make sense of this dark desire, Arianna pored over the journals, memoirs, and other 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 kill oneself and doing it—or, unthinkably, the moment between regretting the action and realizing it can’t be undone. When her brother became institutionalized, Arianna realized that all of the pattern recognition and trenchant insights from her deep dive into the psychology of suicide could not crack the shell of his annihilating depression—and that the only way to help a person live is to address the societal factors that make them want to die.

A harrowing intellectual and emotional odyssey marked by remarkable clarity and compassion, Better is at once a tour through the seductive darkness of death and a powerful, 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?

A Candid Look at Suicidality: Goes beyond clinical discussion to the moment of crisis, exploring a night Arianna composed goodbye letters to her family while grappling with overwhelming depression and debt.
Family History of Mental Illness: Examines the fear of passing down a legacy of depression to her son and confronts the painful parallels of her brother’s own life-threatening mental health battle.
Motherhood and Depression: A raw and honest exploration of what it means to be a new mother while battling the recurrent desire to die, and the complex journey to find a way to stay.
A Writer’s Investigation: Follows Arianna as she pores over the journals, memoirs, and writings of famous suicides, seeking to understand the patterns and societal factors behind the choice to die.