Reviewed by Daniel Leaderman

Angry, restless and irresponsible, Greyson Todd isn’t an easy character to warm up to. Readers may wonder more than once why they’re bothering to continue reading about him, and this isn’t an easy question to answer, but it’s a credit to debut novelist Juliann Garey that Todd’s story remains a compelling, energetic read.

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See opens as Todd abandons his lucrative post at a Hollywood studio, ditches his wife and 8-year-old daughter and sets out on a 10-year odyssey of world travel and indulgence of his severe bipolar disorder.

His travels include stays in Rome, Israel, Chile and Uganda, and he perpetually crafts new identities for himself — as Lee Majors and Joe Conrad, for example — and forges new friendships and relationships for as long as he can stand before he runs off to start anew once more.

Todd slyly pumps a dead stranger’s grieving friends for information about his life, then cons his way into taking over the dead man’s job as a college professor. Later, in Uganda, he impulsively marries a pregnant widow — potentially contracting AIDS in the process — to keep her from having to marry her brother-in-law. He buys her a house and gives her money to live, pay for her children’s schooling and cover her medical bills. Then, true to form, he leaves her. But by walking out, Todd believes he’s doing what’s best for the woman and her children, and he’s almost certainly right. He knows he can’t be trusted to see his plan to provide for her through, so he entrusts the operation to a hotel concierge.

Along the way, Garey flashes back to Todd’s childhood and adolescence, where we see his father struggle with the same illness, and flashes forward to show glimpses of Todd in a mental hospital, being treated by electroshock therapy after his years of wandering have drawn to a close.

Depicting a descent into madness is a difficult task, in part because when a character isn’t in control of his life, or even his mind, it keeps the reader from caring much about what happens to him. If Todd is forever at the mercy of the chemicals in his brain, his actions, decisions and feelings about the people around him begin to feel arbitrary.

But Garey’s writing has a raw urgency that pushes the story forward, and as she digs deeper into Todd’s past, we see him less as a cad and more as a survivor.

Garey reveals how haunted Todd is by the illness in his family. As a child, he watched his father in a mania-fueled spending binge plunge the family thousands of dollars into debt, and he witnessed the near-crippling paralysis that accompanied one of his father’s depressive cycles. Todd’s perpetual need to flee becomes all the more relatable. “Run, run,” Todd thinks to himself after seeing his father drive up to the house in a new Cadillac they can’t afford. “Before it’s too late.”

But perhaps it is too late. As an adult, Todd finds treatment for his own illness of little help. The levels of lithium needed to keep his illness at bay turns him into “a lumbering, inarticulate idiot,” and keep him from doing his job effectively.

During Todd’s most tortured moments, Garey’s prose captures the speed and fury of his mood swings and lets the reader share the feeling of not being in control of one’s actions, or even one’s own thoughts. Frustrating though it may be to see Todd build another friendship on lies and then suddenly abandon it, we know that he, too, is just along for the ride. But although moving back and forth through Todd’s life gives Garey’s narrative speed and rhythm, the knowledge that he will eventually find himself institutionalized undercuts that momentum as the novel progresses. The flashbacks may illuminate Todd’s past, but his grown-up self remains static for much of the story. Readers may find themselves growing impatient as they watch him stumble toward his inevitable collapse.

However, Todd’s inability to move forward may be just what Garey is trying to illustrate. Despite his travels and love affairs, he remains frozen and isolated from everyone he meets, unable to connect with them for more than a brief time. Understanding Todd requires a journey inwards, examining how profoundly his illness sets him apart from his peers and his family.

By the end of that journey, we realize just how far away Todd has always been from the cozy, suburban family life glimpsed in the novel’s opening pages. Being a normal father and husband just isn’t in the cards, whether he stays on the medication or not.

As Todd tries to maintain some connection to the people he once loved through the fog in his mind, it’s clear that simply retaining some sense of his identity has become a monumental, even heroic struggle. Though frustrating at times, Garey’s exploration of her character’s tormented existence makes for a compelling read.

Daniel Leaderman studied English at Kenyon College and journalism at the University of Maryland. He is a reporter covering state politics in Maryland.