cover image Cliffs of Despair: A Journey to Suicide's Edge

Cliffs of Despair: A Journey to Suicide's Edge

Tom Hunt, . . Random, $24.95 (244pp) ISBN 978-0-375-50715-1

Beachy Head, a four-mile-long cliff on the south coast of England, is the third most popular suicide site in the world. According to Hunt, a Connecticut English teacher, more than 500 people have died there since 1965, most of them suicides . His brother-in-law, a schizophrenic, shot himself in the head, and Hunt, having read about Beachy Head in the Philadelphia Inquirer , decided to investigate the spot, visiting several times. Part memoir, part social history, this study attempts to analyze the mental state of a potential suicide within this geographical context. Writing with intelligence and sensitivity, Hunt describes the "sirenlike pull of the cliff edge," vividly conveying his own compulsion to plunge down. He interviews cab drivers who drove suicides to the site, police negotiators who prevented others from accomplishing their destructive goal and the team members who recover bodies from the cliffs. Hunt also speaks at length with relatives of several victims and relates the haunting chronicle of the Copper family, whose 24-year-old son leaped off the cliff after a thwarted love affair. What distinguishes this debut is both the accomplished prose and the author's refusal to judge men and women who decide to end their lives. (On sale Jan. 24)