Chapter 8 "They Tell Me It Rained" Summary and Analysis

After David's death, Jamison plunges full-bore into her work and takes lithium regularly. The result is that she makes great professional strides and experiences a more stable and predictable life. Still unhealed emotionally, not only from David's death, but from ravages of her own disease and suicide attempt, Jamison decides to take a one-year sabbatical leave and to study manic depressive illness among British artists and writers at Oxford University at St. George's Hospital Medical School in London.

She slips comfortably into a different academic routine balanced between the legendary hospital and university, where she is a senior research fellow. The timelessness and solidity of both institutions, as well as the cultural amenities of the university environment, awaken her spirit and quicken her mind. In this most elite of...