The Dreamers - Karen Thompson Walker

Is it a good idea to read a book about a deadly contagious disease while staying at home to avoid a deadly contagious disease? I don't know about any of you but it did feel a little surreal.

The Dreamers explores what happens when a contagious sleeping sickness strikes a small Southern California college town. The inhabitants are at first carefree and oblivious to the possible danger participating in daily activities and even celebrating Halloween trick-or-treating with abandon as the disease spreads from person to person. Who gets it and who doesn't, doesn't seem to follow any particular pattern.

Since we are all amateur virologists these days, there were some technical aspects of the disease I expected the book to address which it did not. This is not a "Contagion" style book. This is a book that looks more at the societal collapse under a viral threat combined with a thoughtful contemplation of what it means to dream and what it would mean to dream for weeks at a time without the touchstone of reality to fall back upon.

The beginning of the book begins with a quote from the book Blindness, by Jose Saragamo (you can read my review of that here), which I read several years ago and still stays with me at times. This book doesn't dip into the levels of depravity found in that book, but the cycle of the disease and the exploration of the citizenry is evocative of that novel.

I was pleased to find that the writing and the narrative in The Dreamers was finer and tighter than The Age of Miracles, which I read a couple years ago but didn't enjoy as much as this one. (You can read my review of that book here).

3.5/5

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. 

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

Excuse me while my eyeballs adjust from all the crying. 

Still Alice is another page-turning and devastating look at neurological disease from the queen of this genre that I didn't know I needed, Lisa Genova. 

I read, and cried, all the way through Every Note Played (you can read that review here), last month so I decided I should return to see the book that "started it all" more or less for Genova. Interestingly, I preferred Every Note Played to Still Alice. The writing was more precise and polished. The dialogue more honest and well-timed. Every Note Played is the result of an artist at the top of her game. Still Alice is a younger, earlier work, of no less emotional power, but slightly rickety craftsmanship, which can only be seen in the comparison. 

Still Alice is the story of Alice Howland, a Harvard psychology professor who is in the apex of her career. She has raise three successful children who are now adults and forging careers of their own. She is well respected and sought out for speaking engagements and presentations. She's married to a biologist, John, and together they are an academic power couple. Alice has everything. A rewarding career, the respect of her peers, admiration from her students, and accolades for her work. The only slightly dark spot is a strained relationship with her youngest daughter, Lydia, who at 22 is living out in LA trying to make a career as an actress. Alice, being a Harvard professor, wants Lydia to go to school and give up on acting. 

But then subtle cracks in Alice's memory begin to show, including a particularly disturbing event where she gets lost blocks from home in an area of Cambridge she'd known well for more than 20 years. Alice decides to seek the advice of her doctor leading to a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's disease. 

Alice is able to trace her diagnosis to the strange behavior of her alcoholic father before his death. Her children then decide if they want to know if they too carry the gene for inherited EOAD. The thing I like so much about Genova's writing is that the characters aren't perfect. Even the minor characters can be well drawn. The child we spend the least amount of time with in the book is Tom. Alice's middle child, a busy doctor, so his treatment is the most superficial. But the daughters Anna and Lydia are well done. And seeing Alice's relationship with Lydia repair is the most satisfying part of an otherwise sad and tragic story. 

A while ago I read, We are Not Ourselves (you can read that review here). Which was told from the perspective of the wife of someone going through EOAD. Still Alice, written from Alice's perspective, was much more satisfying and personal. But having read that earlier book I did understand more where Alice's husband, John, was coming from. However, at the end, I was most dissatisfied with John, who seemed to have his own view of how to treat Alice's disease, and therefore, Alice. But just because I didn't like how the end of the book was left with John, does not mean that plot or story-wise, it was the wrong decision for Genova to make. 

As a lover of audio books, I will say that not all books are meant to be read by the author. This makes sense when a memoir connects the content to the speaker. But in a work of fiction, with dialogue between many characters, the work of a real professional narrator really does make a difference. This book was read by the author so it missed a little of the inflection and warmth a good narrator can bring to a story. 

But since I sometimes couldn't hear the words for sobbing, it's probably just a minor issue.

4/5 Stars. 

Every Note Played - Lisa Genova

It's 11 p.m. and I have one hour left to go in this audiobook that has continually crushed me through each chapter. Do I stay up and listen to the last hour or go to bed and leave the last hour for my commute today? Of course I stayed up, my sleep regulator (my husband) is out of town and book choices always turn into "one more chapter" affairs.

But honestly, with the amount of crying I did in the last chapter of Every Note Played, I'm glad I didn't try to arrive at my place of employment looking the way I looked when I finally turned out the light at midnight. 

ENP tells the story of Karina and Richard - estranged spouses, talented pianists, parents to a single child who has chosen sides in an ugly breakup of the family. Richard is a famous concert pianist, travelling the world to perform with symphonies. Karina gave up her own dream and possible career at the piano to raise their daughter in suburban Boston. There's so much resentment and misplaced anger in this story that it's hard sometimes to live in the heads of the characters.

Chapters alternate from Richard to Karina's points of view as we learn that Richard has been diagnosed with ALS, a debilitating motor neuron disease which has no cure and no real treatment. As we move through the stages of grief with Richard and then Karina as the disease slowly affects more and more of Richard's functions, the characters are forced to reckon with their past relationship and the resentments and disappointments they harbor for one another. 

I found myself more frustrated with Karina than with Richard through a lot of the book. I think she unfairly blamed him for things (not that he didn't deserve some blame) that were actually her issues. But, Genova knows her craft and in the end.... well. It's just a really good book, so go read it.

4.5/5 stars.