You could almost be forgiven for hearing Prokofiev's theme to TV show 'The Apprentice, whilst halfway through reading this book. I apologise now, as the title threw me a bit. Although this touches on mental health, a failed suicide attempt and (to quote Alan Patridge) 'bouncing back', this book is essentially a memoir (or a self-help guide) depending on your thought process, on how success in business equates to success in life. Although professing that it definitely doesn't, author Rob Goddard can't help but telling us about his rise/fall/rise in the business, management consultants, million-pound operations, four corners of business philosophy, and any other 'blue sky' thinking (nauseating) office vernacular that you can shake a laptop at. Lesser said about that the better. Aside of a nice message about male mental health, comradeship and some sort of altruistic cliched nonsense about spreading the wealth about (by the end of the book Robert Goddard is back in Dubai and a major success) this is tedious at best. It offers zero substance, little advice, a tawdry back story (wife, kids, bank job - lost the lot, little explained) and isn't of any substance in terms of a male mental health crisis or how to manage them.

If you're looking for an uplifting story about how a man-made a lot of money, lost it, then made loads again, then this is for you. Personally, I find capitalism quite depressing- which is ironic really.

This book is principally aimed at men suffering from depression and who may have contemplated suicide. Given that suicide is a big killer of men, I understand why the author is aiming for that market - we should be trying to reach out to them and help them.

I don’t fall into this category, being female, but I still found the book interesting. I would have liked to see more on the author’s personal story of overcoming depression - it felt to me this wasn’t explored enough. I have read for example Matt Haig’s book Reasons to Stay Alive and this book reminded me of that but I think it could have benefited from more exploration of the issues.

The tie in of going from suicide to success is an interesting one. Often those (men and women) who feel like they have nothing to live for, feel that way at least in part because they feel they don’t have success, are struggling financially, don’t feel they contribute something to the lives of those around them. The authors story of coming back from suicide to success and in fact being able to employ others and give them jobs is a good way to demonstrate that suicide is a long term solution to a short term problem. If that door hadn’t been locked, he wouldn’t have been around to create the company, provide those jobs and provide that service. I’m not suggesting that those he employed would have been financially destitute because that door wasn’t locked, but their lives would have been different in some way.

Overall, I enjoyed this short read but would definitely have liked to see further development of some of the issues - the longer read would have been worth that. I definitely agree that male or female we all need an Alex.