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.
Poor Eleanor Flood has spent the last ten years of her life fighting her own inertia. She's moved to Seattle with her famous hand-surgeon husband Joe, and is less than busy raising their 9-year-old son, Timby. Once upon a New York, Eleanor was the animation director of a popular TV show called Looper Wash. But since then she's sort of lost her way. But on this day, the day covered in this delightful book, she promises upon waking that Today Will Be Different. She will be present in her conversations with people, she will spend time with Timby, she will initiate sex with Joe. So of course her plan goes off the rails early when she is about to meet up with someone for lunch when she gets a call from Timby's school saying he has a stomach ache and needs to be picked up. Between Eleanor's awkwardness and inability to recognize/remember faces/names, a lot starts to go wrong. Joe, who is supposed to be a work is not. Her lunch date with friend Sydney Madsen turns out to be a lunch date with a former Looper Wash intern, Spencer Martel. Eleanor is forced to face the reality of her life and her wasted potential and talent. So the day does turn out to be different, just not in any of the ways Eleanor imagined. The thing I enjoy about Maria Semple's work, is that although the characters can be a bit out there, there are some real life gems in the way she creates conflict for the main characters - in this story between Eleanor and her sister Ivy. And Semple isn't afraid to not wrap up those conflicts in a neat bow. I appreciate that, because it's not true to life.
4/5 Stars.
"The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it."It's crazy to think, that in surviving four different Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl was still able to find meaning in his life and in his suffering. Man's Search for Meaning, first published in 1946, is brief and poignant. How did Frankl survive the camps is not the real question. How did he find meaning in his suffering is more to the point. Frankl serves up depravity from a detached point of view, and offers sympathy and grace equally to those who did not survive, and to those that became monsters to survive. In so doing, he offers a better way, a hope for ourselves when all else seems lost:“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”I've been on a huge "Choose Joy" kick lately, all the while understanding that choosing joy may be easy when you live a life of privilege. But here, Frankl suggests that joy is even available for those who do not have all the benefits of a gifted life. And that even death with dignity is a meaning unto itself.
5/5 Stars.
I liked this book slightly less than Big Little Lies (you can read that review here), mostly due to the pacing, but Liane Moriarty really does write rich, full stories, with complex characters. This one was no exception. This particular story begins with a bit of a mystery.
We are introduced to three couples, Erica and Oliver, a stuffy, precise couple; Clementine and Sam, a fun couple which includes a female cellist and their two adorable daughters; and Vid and Tiffany, rich neighbors of E&O who also have a daughter, Dakota. The book begins with Erica and Clementine, childhood friends who have an odd competitive, complicated history and the set-up includes mentions back to some event, a barbecue that has changed the course of these characters lives.
As we get further and further into the book the barbecue mystery deepens, takes shape, unravels, and then becomes clear again. I felt like this portion of the book took a bit too long and it seemed the author let the characters take on a bit too much - as in she allowed too many of them to have their own POV chapters that ended up feeling a bit unnecessary. So the first half of the book, first 60% really was a bit of a frustrating experience for me. While the last portion hit me on a pretty personal level, and having just finished it, is pushing me to give a 4-star rating, I have to recall again that the first part was so frustrating.
But again, Moriarty gives us such rich characters who are complex, and rather than become caricatures of themselves, she allows their past and their parenting and their influences to shape wonderfully flawed and human portraits. It's a pleasure to think about the characters and what they are going through and have them react to situations like real people, rather than two-dimensional figures pushing forward a plot point.
3.5/5 Stars..
