How did you become interested in suicide?

The first boy who ever proposed to me (at the age of six!) shot himself in the head at the age of 16. A girl in my year at school then threw herself in front of a moving car. My ex-fiance, a renowned American magazine editor, overdosed on cocaine six years after we split. Two other men I knew – one a musician, the other a philosopher – overdosed on heroin. A man who stalked me committed suicide. And then my 32-year-old brother, an investment banking executive, gassed himself at 32. There were others. So in terms of becoming interested in suicide, I don't think I had much of a choice in the matter.

How do you think your subjectivity about the topic affected the book?

A person who has never known bereavement or suicidal ideation has as much business writing a book about bereavement and suicidal ideation as a virgin does writing a guide to sexual intimacy.

What was your intention for putting out this book?

To help the bereaved and those who experience suicidal impulses to understand the mechanics of their reactions. What is depression, and how can it be reframed as a positive experience? Why is grief so agonizing, and what does it mean? How can you stop wanting to die? Is fundamental change possible? I allowed the experience of grief to engulf me, and then analysed it – and also examined my brother's death from every angle, which allowed me not only to make sense of the whole thing, but to help others.

For every suicide, it is estimated that there are six deeply affected survivors, and the World Health Organization reported one million (indisputable) suicides in 2000. (Suicides are often falsely recorded as "accidental discharges of weapons" to maintain the decorum or compensation eligibility of survivors.) Which means that each night, over 82,000 people around the world will try to kill themselves. And most of them are men aged between 20 and 45.

Suicide is a topic that many people of strong views about. How did you go about negotiating this?

People who have never experienced suicide, a complicated death, or profound grief are always a little shocked. They fear that The Eclipse will be “dark”, when it is, in the end, a profoundly uplifting and hopeful book. What they don't understand is that it is their perception of death that is dark. Our culture is terrified of death! We understand it as a cult of skulls and bones. Which is ridiculous, really. Death is not the opposite of life; death is the opposite of birth. Life has no ending. Death is just a door.

And those who commit suicide really buy into this idea of death as being the opposite of life – you know, “If I kill myself, all my problems will be over!” This terrible need to exert some kind of control over a life that no longer feels in control. It's a philosophical problem, at core. And men, of course, are the most vulnerable. Why? Because they are conditioned (by caregivers, by society) to stifle all feelings of vulnerability, and also taught that control is synonymous with masculinity.

Do you think the book focuses more about the point of suicide or the coping with it?

How is it possible to truly process bereavement by suicide without understanding the mechanics of suicide?

How were you about to deal with such a personal subject? How did you deal with the risk of the text becoming too self-indulgent?

The idea of “self indulgence” in relation to emotion is interesting to me. So many men regard emotion as “self indulgent” without actually understanding what “self indulgence” is, why they associate it with emotional expression, or where this ideology originates. Our idea of what it is to be human is a fragile construct, and, in essence, more a cultural/political prescription than representative of true human experience. Men are made to understand that (a) emotion is “feminine” terrain, (b) that the experience of emotion lessens or erodes masculinity, and (c) that “reason” is superior to emotion. But emotion is not gendered. We all love, fear, celebrate, grieve. There is absolutely no relationship to gender, other than the one that exists in our cultural mythology. How can reason separated from emotion? The very importance with which we imbue “reason” is a value judgment – that is, emotional! This fantasy of objectivity distorts all our lives. To be human is, by definition, to be subjective. You can only perceive the world through the prisms of your age, gender, physical limitations, culture, and so on.

What is your view on suicide? Do you think this colours your perspective going into your research?

Suicide is both a philosophical miscalculation and an irreversible assertion of emotional truth.

What kind of research did you embark on before starting this book?

Extensive reading, and discussion with other survivors. I now also do non-profit suicide counselling in my spare time. I think I'm pretty zen about it all, primarily because suicide doesn't scare me, and also because I'm in a very happy place.

Is there a silver lining to a subject such as suicide?

From the perspective of the suicide, no. From the perspective of the survivor, absolutely. Handled with intelligence, tolerance, and patience, bereavement by suicide can be one of the greatest opportunities you will ever be given to revolutionize your life for the better.

In your opinion, do you think that focusing on suffering serves to entrench the experience? Is it palliative? Does it alleviate the cause or the symptom?

The opposite. Ignoring suffering leads to suicide. Ignoring suffering in yourself and others is straight-up emotional abuse. Which is not to suggest that one should wallow in a frothing bath of self-pity, you understand; emotional darkness is a code to be deciphered, not a curse.

I understand that the project may have been cathartic for your own experience, but how do you think it will affect your readership?

Two major international newspapers wanted an excerpt for the covers of their review sections, and readers continue to write to me expressing their gratitude. The most moving response came from a Finnish reader who said that after reading The Eclipse, her friend visited - for the very first time - the grave of a beloved who committed suicide. This woman had been so angry that she refused to visit the grave for decades! The Eclipse made her understand why her beloved had killed himself, and also how rage was corroding her life. Millions of people, storing such toxic levels of anger and grief! It's just mind-boggling. The bereaved can feel very alone, and to discover The Eclipse helps them feel as if they are part of the world again.

There may be a danger in revealing that suicide is such a common experience. It has a tendency to make it seem more viable to people who are suffering. It may serve to de-stigmatize suicide. What do you think of this?

Not at all. I think it's dangerous to show a suicide visually, because visuals are easily taken out of context, but to place a suicide in context – and present it as devoid of rockstar glamour - on the page is very, very effective. And to do so helps the suicidal to really understand the impact of the suicide, which of course none of them do beforehand.

Lastly, what would you say to those who are simply put off by such a grave subject?

I suggest they examine their aversion, because in powerful aversion, there is always an uncomfortable measure of identification.

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