i felt really bad for Mr. Dobson at the start and was happy when he started to recover. It was a good read and I hope the author is doing better.

I tried my best to be engaged and focused when I read this book, but I seriously struggled while reading. The author has experienced quite a bit. He has a very interesting story to tell, but I couldn't connect another with the story to truly ride along and stay interested. I eventually ended up giving up and starting skimming, which is never a good sign for me. What should have been a truly adventurous, engaging and harrowing story instead came off as very dull and hazy. I really wanted to enjoy this book, but in the end, it simply wasn't for me.

I tried liking this book. The writing was okay but I had no idea as to who he was talking about until way into the book. I had a lot of conflict and confusion as to why someone who has issues with alcohol would want to be a winemaker. Am glad for the fact that he was able to turn his life around. Anyway check it out. Every reader is different. Happy reading!

'Others are impressions, contemplations. But the journals always remind me of who I was and what I was thinking.'

Ferment is a travel memoir of sorts, a journey through mental illness and Germany. It is a return to memories, people of the past who helped pull him through and how depression both hinders and guides a life. With his dearest friend dying in another country, it added to the usual turmoil that comes and goes, it is the very thing that pushes him into a bottomless depression and a suicide attempt with his little boy in the next room. So begins a stay at a psychiatric facility, self imposed, and a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. Understanding dawns of all the erratic emotions, the difficult relationships, the highs and the lows of his life. The jobs he ditched, the journeys he took that altered his life and forged deep friendships like the one, more like a brotherhood, with his friend Joachim Frick whom he met while traveling through Germany.

Years pass, sobriety follows his stay in the facility and the past weighs on him. He decides it is time to return to the place he created a life for himself, Germany, with his partner Virginia and son Nick. Through this quest, he wants to understand the choices he made as a young man, the relationships he established particularly his friendship with Joachim and what drove him to attempt a fresh new life at the age of 22 in 1985, while in the grip of depression. It is now an “attempt to set his mental illness into context’. He will write his way through it all, try to set memory into place and take stock of who he was and has become. Reunion is long overdue, with his German friends and his former selves.

Mania is a creeping companion, always threatening at the edge of Patrick’s days. Through physical labor and mental activity he presently does his best to keep it from breaking through. But it wasn’t always that way, with his eyes on the past he sheds light on his “incredible flights of mind”, and his drinking problem. The drama, the erratic behavior and strained friendships of those days. His brush with the law, during manic episodes, the grandiose schemes, his ability to continue to function, keep a job and fancy himself a winemaker. Long ago, fully entrenched in the idea of wine-making, his friend convinced him to go where the vineyards are- Germany. That was how he found himself in the Old Country.

Past to present, Patrick carries his journals with him, relying on ‘impressions of the man I once was’ through accounts of his friends and his own scribbling in the journals, often presenting like a stranger to his older, hopefully wiser self. Here is where it’s a bit difficult to follow, one minute the reader is in the present, the next we are in 1985 or thereabouts and then we’re with him on the current journey. It’s understandable he himself is doing just that, sifting through the past with the eyes of the present, but it can be hard to keep track. The one constant is his ability to inform the reader of his emotional states, which is vital to the purpose of the memoir. He certainly expresses how he learns coping techniques and how in the past the mania or crashing after it effected every moment. His days of internship in Tier was often lonely, taking him from cellar to the vineyard, the work outdoors always helping him through the manias. He meets a man named Ivo (a man apprenticed at a stained glass restoration firm) by chance when he is ready to throw in the towel. This chance meeting is his salvation and means of making friends with others, just the interactions he needs to sustain himself. Then there is his romance with Monique, which tests his maturity but it is Sabine who is emotional, possibly unstable. Neither relationship is intensely explored here.

During his time working in Tier, he becomes incredibly close with the Fricks, with Josef (a winemaker) and Marlies treating him like one of their own children. Here he meets the best friend he will ever have, their son Joachim, who is home from his semester exchange with a University in Massachusetts. There is an immediate bond between Patrick and Joachim from the first moment of their meeting. “Our rapport never knew the separation of time and distance,” a man who acts as an anchor, who even in his deepest struggles (brain cancer) teaches that one must live everyday as if it were their last. To take what they can from each moment.

One thing is certain, he has been blessed with a life full of good people who have become family, blood related or not. It is through these friends he has tried to make sense of himself, with their attention and love to keep him anchored. Seeing the loss, the grief, trials and tribulations the Fricks face with grace helps him cope with his own difficulties.

Writing has also been a means to corral his fears and worries, to face his own selfish demands, not medication alone. I have mixed feelings about this memoir because it got away from me at times. There were moments I felt the writing was engaging, particularly the beautiful bond between Patrick and Joachim, but then I would be distracted by memories out of order. He declares himself to be selfish at times, and he can come off that way, but then you feel he is redeemed as well. After-all, he can’t be a bad guy, taking his sister’s son in as his own child. I feel like the problem is we’re introduced to his past that comes in bits and pieces. Some of the writing could be left out and the focus would have been better on filling in the gaps. There is quite a bit of wandering, as one does in Europe. He handles plans that go awry far better than one would expect, which I suppose is how his life often felt, like something gone awry.

He seems to have come to terms with his illness, finding there can be fruitfulness in all things, even in Bipolar Disorder. It did, when all is said and done, push him on the journey that led him to beautiful friendships with fascinating people and help form the man he is today. I just wish the book was in a bit of better order. I would have liked to know more about his childhood that felt skimmed over and his relationship with Sabine felt like a blink. I have read a lot of memoirs, so it could just be that I have high expectations when dealing with sharing one’s past. I think were it a bit more cohesive I could have had an easier time following along and keeping things straight. I wanted to get to know his daughter and wife more. It could well be that maybe it’s a protective thing, and he just wanted to focus on friendships, still…

Publication Date: June 16, 2020

Skyhorse Publishing

I think this could be an interesting book but maybe I am not the intended audience. I think it needed a bit more editing. It starts with Patrick talking about his attempted suicide and the people that live with him, but he doesn't actually introduce them, you find out later it was his wife he was talking about.