Myna Wallin's ​The Suicide Tourist

Reviewed by Selena Mercuri

(Ekstasis Editions, 2024)

​Myna Wallin’s The Suicide Tourist is a striking exploration of what it means to live with bipolar disorder. Rather than writing about survival as a triumph, Wallin describes it as a process that is gritty, repetitive, and nonlinear. These poems do not simply build toward recovery or redemption—instead, they sit within the everyday rhythms of mental illness, depicting disorientation, shame, fleeting joy, and exhaustion.
 
Across the collection, Wallin crafts an interior world where reality is slippery and perception is under siege. In “Mania,” she writes: “Somebody is moving and hiding things / in my home, creating piles of detritus, unpaid / bills, medication. A sprite / hides my drink between sips.” The chaos is subtle but accumulative—familiar objects turn untrustworthy, and time seems to fold in on itself. These poems are often domestic, often spare, and all the more devastating for it.
 
Wallin also captures the quiet absurdities of life on the margins of mental health “normalcy.” In “Spring,” the speaker wonders, “Do I saunter over to the swing / in the tiny playground, alarm / a parent tending a gliding child / and take my turn?” There’s tenderness and discomfort here, tentative and a little bruised—a moment of social tension in the possibility of being seen as out of place. The core feeling seems to be one of yearning; it’s a vulnerable question about whether the speaker is allowed to access play, softness, or joy, especially in a world that often polices who gets to inhabit childlike wonder. The poem opens a more poignant question: Can a woman living with bipolar disorder reclaim the right to lightness, to delight, to a past iteration of herself?
 
Throughout the book, Wallin’s language is taut and pared down. Her voice veers between ironic distance and lyrical intimacy, often in the span of a few lines. One such example is in “Late,” where she writes: “You can’t know what night is / until you’ve embraced it / like a wicked deed / you’ve made your own. // You need some darkness inside / to appreciate the approaching black / as it descends all around.” Rather than sensationalize darkness, these lines name it, sit with it, and acknowledge its familiarity.
 
The Suicide Tourist is an incredibly honest account of living with a mind that resists containment. Wallin’s speaker moves between exhaustion and wonder, despair and wry humour, always aware of the precariousness of her footing. Moments like the playground swing remind us that survival isn’t always loud or triumphant. Sometimes it’s just the quiet courage to reach for something joyful, even when it feels out of reach. In this way, The Suicide Tourist becomes a document of endurance and a moving testament to the strange, persistent desire to keep going.

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Selena Mercuri is a Toronto-based writer, editor, book reviewer, publicist, and social media manager. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and a Certificate in Publishing from Toronto Metropolitan University, where she received the Marsh Jeanneret Memorial Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, The Literary Review of Canada, The Dalhousie Review, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire, The Ampersand Review, The BC Review, The Seaboard Review, The Hart House Review, The Trinity Review, and The Temz Review.
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Selena was the recipient of the 2023 Norma Epstein Foundation Award for Creative Writing and a finalist in the Hart House Poetry Contest. She will begin the University of Guelph’s MFA program in Creative Writing in the fall. Selena is a publicist with River Street and a social media associate at The Rights Factory.