Inside the O'Briens - Lisa Genova

I'm choosing lately to go back to authors I trust and I know Lisa Genova is going to lay it all out for me on these terrible heartbreaking diseases in a way that makes me really understand not just the science but the humanity.

In Inside the O'Briens, Boston police officer Joe O'Brien begins having irrational outbursts of anger in his late 30s. Pop forward to his early forties and Joe is having a few issues with involuntary movements. A toe that is tapping too much and without Joe really wanting it to. Joe is doing his best to ignore it, but his four kids, all in their early twenties, and his wife, Rosie, are having trouble ignoring it. Finally, Joe's best friend and fellow police officer, and his wife intervene to have him checked out. He's then confronted with the diagnosis. Huntington's Disease. A cruel chromosomal extension of a particular gene that causes symptoms that are an unfair mix of Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and ALS. And with four kids, each child has a 50/50 chance of inheriting this gene. 

So now the mom inside me is reeling as I think about Rosie and having to look at her four children, J.J., Megan, Katie, and Patrick and wonder what awaits them. There is no cure for HD. And a diagnosis means debilitating symptoms leading ultimately to death. J.J., whose wife is newly pregnant, is the first to get tested. Then Megan, then Katie. Patrick prefers not to know. And we all wait with them as they find out their fate. But the great and truly wonderful thing about Genova's writing, is that she lets these characters be themselves. She lets them be so flawed. Not everything in a Genova book is tied up at the end. Not everyone gets to be their own hero. Some of the characters are going to let you down. They're going to disappoint you. And that's very very real.

But also, these diseases don't define the characters. The results, ultimately don't matter. Because they are all still people living with the disease, not an embodiment of the disease itself. Genova lets her characters show the human struggle of maintaining our humanity while a disease strips us of our identities. It's a remarkable thing. 

So I was ready for all of the above, and it still really hit hard. But then, then, Genova switched up the narration and some of the chapters come not from J0e, but from Katie. And there it was. The point of view that I hadn't considered and wasn't ready for. Because I have one sister. And if she had something like this, I'm not sure what that would do to me, to us. And when Katie and Megan have to explore this issue... well I wasn't ready. And there was a lot of ugly crying in my car in my work parking lot as I tried to put myself back together. Sister stuff. It gets me every time.

4/5 Stars.