Tag Archives: Illness

April 21, 2013 · 12:12 pm

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

Weird SistersEleanor Brown‘s eponymous “weird sisters” – introduced with a quote from the good Bard’s Macbeth: “I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters” – are perhaps the most erudite characters I’ve encountered in a long time. Trained by a professor father who speaks to them mostly in Shakespeare quotes, their literary prowess sprouts early. That said, the sisters’ are not just passive receptors for pretty words; they certainly know how to think for themselves: ”Here’s one of the problems with communicating in the words of a man who is not around to explain himself: it’s damn hard sometimes to tell what he was talking about. Look, the sheer fact that people have banged out book after article after dramatic interpretation of this guy should tell you that despite his eloquence, he wasn’t the clearest of communicators.” [Surely one of the best Shakespeare comments ever!]

In spite of all that book learning, real life for Rose (yes, Rosalind from As You Like It), Bean (Bianca from The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia from King Lear) doesn’t seem to be following the right script. When their mother is diagnosed with cancer, the family reunites in the sisters’ childhood home in small-college-town Barnwell, Ohio. Ostensibly home to offer assistance, the true reasons are somewhat different: Rose who has never strayed from home has to demonstrate once again she is the most responsible sister, even if that means putting her own life on hold and sending her fiancé solo across the Pond to teach at Oxford; Bean’s glamorous Manhattan life has come to an ignoble, sudden end when she’s caught embezzling from her too-generous employer who is willing to quietly let her slink away with promises to repay her sizable debt; and Cordy has run out of options living an aimlessly peripatetic existence now that she has to think for about-to-be-two rather than only her self-indulgent self. Their relationships with each other? “See, we love one another. We just don’t happen to like one another very much.”

How will these “weird” sisters fare? Brown hints early on, “But it is worth noting, especially now that ‘weird’ has evolved from its delicious original meaning of supernatural strangeness into something depressingly critical and pedestrian … that Shakespeare didn’t really mean the sisters were weird at all. The word he originally used was much closer to ‘wyrd’ … ‘Wyrd’ means fate … that we cannot fight our family and cannot fight our fates.”

Written from a unique plural second person omniscient perspective (such that I’ve never encountered before) which invites you immediately into the learning-to-be-sisterly coven, Brown’s novel is one of those thoroughly enjoyable, easy reads that a weekend deserves. Stick the book in your ears (narrator Kirsten Potter provides excellent company) and join the family on their pre-prandial walk. Readers and listeners will be well-rewarded: Sisters proves to be quite the tribute to books and learning. We might not all be able to go home again, but we can always find comfort and shelter in our nearest libraries: “‘…you’ll need a library card, won’t you?’  … as though that solved everything (which, in our family, it nearly did).” Truth!

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

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April 6, 2013 · 9:40 am

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Brain on FireAt 24, Susannah Cahalan, life was just about perfect. She was a budding journalist working for the New York Post, she went home to a tiny but cozy Manhattan studio, and she had just started a promising new relationship. And then the madness set in, starting with bedbugs – that didn’t exist. In a matter of weeks, she went from trying to convince a puzzled exterminator that her Hell’s Kitchen apartment needed be chemically saturated, to inexplicable paranoia, violent outbursts, and withdrawal.

Doctors tell her worried parents she’s exhausted, partying too much, having alcohol withdrawal. After endless examinations, tests, and scans, Cahalan ends up in the epileptic floor of a major hospital – still misdiagnosed. The breakthrough comes when the “brilliant and selfless” Dr. Souhel Najjar – whom Cahalan calls ‘Dr. House‘ – finally figures out that Cahalan is not psychotic, but that her psychotic symptoms are the result of anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis, a disease so rare that only a handful of patients have been correctly diagnosed. Finally, her arduous, uncertain journey to recovery begins.

In spite of her horrific experience, Cahalan knows with absolute certainty she’s one of the lucky ones: “Dedicated to those without a diagnosis,” she introduces her swiftly moving memoir. Anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis is a highly elusive disease that’s been fooling medical teams for decades, masquerading as variations of autism and schizophrenia: “How many people currently are in psychiatric wards and nursing homes denied the relatively simple cure …?” Cahalan questions as she recovers.

As elusive is her disease, so, too, are Cahalan’s memories: “I remember only flashes of actual events, and brief but vivid hallucinations from the months in which this story takes place,” she explains immediately and prominently in the opening “Author’s Note.” Her journalistic skills get a major workout recreating her own life. From interviews, medical records, her father’s journal, video footage, a notebook that her divorced parents used to communicate with each other (!), and more, Cahalan reconstructs her “evasive past.” She’s the first to admit she’s “an unreliable source,” and yet “[w]hat is left … is a journalist’s inquiry into that deepest part of self – personality, memory, identity – in an attempt to pick up and understand the pieces left behind.”

Choosing the audible option for this title – Heather Henderson makes for an excellent narrator, balancing just the right blend of alarm and detachment – adds an extra layer of immediacy … you can feel the paranoia taking over Cahalan’s disappearing rationality. Be warned that the lengthier passages of medical details might occasionally prove mind-numbing, although you might bypass such a reaction by reading on the page. That said, the emotional intimacy trumps any possible eye-glazing; go ahead, go audible.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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February 24, 2013 · 9:47 am

Irises by Francisco X. Stork

IrisesFirst things first: choose the page, not the headset. Carrington MacDuffie’s voice is just too old to narrate the inner lives of two teenage sisters – no lilting resonance, no youthful lightness. Might I suggest that the better options for aurally appreciating the extraordinary Francisco X. Stork would be Marcelo in the Real World and The Last Summer of the Death Warriors. The ears don’t lie.

Kate is 18, determined and independent, with secret dreams of going to Stanford – instead of the expected, local University of Texas at El Paso – and becoming a doctor one day. Mary is 16, sensitive and thoughtful, an artist gifted beyond her years, with an other-world ability to recognize light in the subjects she paints. Their beloved mother never leaves her bed  … trapped in a vegetative state, kept alive only because of a feeding tube. One afternoon, their father lies down for a rest and never wakes again. Life suddenly shifts to fast-forward …

Mama needs her expensive medical care, the girls must finish school. Kate, as the elder, is faced with serious financial challenges. Aunt Julia arrives from California, but she isn’t exactly the helpful adult the sisters need, too busy criticizing their late father, avoiding her silent sister, and insisting to Kate that marrying her boyfriend Simon now is the sisters’ only secure choice for a future. Then the deacons of the church where Papa ministered for 20 years of his life announce that the family has two months to find a new home to make room for their father’s fiery young successor – who has inappropriate plans of his own.

While Papa was a loving provider, he was also a severe disciplinarian: “The only decision [the sisters] needed to make when he was alive was whether to obey willingly or unwillingly.” Without his restrictions, both girls grow in new ways: Mary finds a comforting new friendship; Kate reexamines many of hers. Both manage to find the strength to make impossible decisions with surprising wisdom – and always love.

Although Stork has a penchant for creating narratives populated by characters facing difficult challenges, he never resorts to easy feel-good answers or deus ex machina-solutions. His can’t-turn-the-page-fast-enough stories are ultimately reminders of the resilience of our youth, with a ringing endorsement that whatever they face, they can – and will – do so with tenacity and courage.

Readers: Young Adult

Published: 2012

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February 23, 2013 · 9:44 am

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

How I Live NowHow I chose this: It actually had nothing to with that shiny 2005 Michael L. Printz Award sticker on the cover. The narrator, Kim Mai Guest, made me do it! Guest, who is apparently 43 (so says her Wiki bio), has one of those eternal voices, always pitch-perfectly tuned for teenaged characters.

How I think now: What started really, really well, devolved to smack-in-the-forehead, ‘are you kidding me?’ The no-turning-back point came here: ” … partly the idea of wanting to be thin in a world full of people dying from lack of food struck even me as stupid. Well, what do you know? Every war has its silver lining ….” No, really.

How I summarize (in one annoyed sentence – possible spoiler alert): Motherless teenaged New Yorker goes rural, takes up with her younger British cousin, recovers from anorexia only by living through World War III with a 9-year-old (girl) cousin in tow, and after more suffering, sort of lives happily ever after.

How I might expound further: At 15, Daisy is not quite dignified enough to inhabit her given name, Elizabeth. When she’s sent to live with her aunt and four cousins in a remote English village, she’s not too upset to be an ocean away from her distant father, her “Evil Stepmother,” and their “devil’s spawn” about to be birthed back in Manhattan. She’s instantly smitten with her 14-year-old cousin Edmond for whom age has few limits: he smokes, he drives … and he recognizes Daisy as a soulmate for life.

Daisy’s Aunt Penn is her only connection to “a mother I barely ever got a chance to meet,” but before they can spend even a few days together, Aunt Penn is off to Oslo to give a lecture. Being home alone with her cousins, ages 9 to 18, is initially ”happy” … until World War III breaks out. The children are eventually separated, and for the first time in her life, Daisy is forced out of her self-absorption and must figure out how she and her 9-year-old cousin will survive to reunite with whomever might be left of their shrinking family.

How I’m in the minority (in so many ways): Besides the coveted Printz, American-turned-Brit Meg Rosoff’s debut novel also won the 2004 Guardian Children’s Fiction prize, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread (now Costa Book Awards) and Orange (now Women’s Prize for Fiction) prizes, and more.

How I Live Now … continued: For said groupies out there, here’s the IMDB file about the coming film adaptation. While you’re waiting, you might check out this five-part 2007 radio adaptation from the BBC: click here for Episode 1. My own journey ends here with the book, but yours might be just beginning … all in the eyes (and ears) of the beholder.

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2004

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February 11, 2013 · 9:29 am

Hikikomori and the Rental Sister by Jeff Backhaus

Hikkomori and the Rental SisterI’m facing a bit of a conundrum with this book: just how little can I tell you and still entice you to check out this astonishing debut novel by emerging-fully-formed-like-Athena, new author Jeff Backhaus?

Hmm … might this work? Drop everything and read this book NOW.

Still not convinced? Okay, let’s try examining the title. Unless you know something about contemporary Japanese subculture, you probably aren’t familiar with the social phenomenon of hikikomori, or reclusive shut-ins. The book’s back cover explains, “literally pulling inward; refers to those who withdraw from society.” Then we have “the rental sister” – she’s a counselor hired by the hikikomori’s family to try to draw him (most are male) back into the world.

Backhaus’s dual narrative is subtly, hauntingly constructed like musical counterpoint, harmonious and independent both. His two protagonists, promised in the title, cannot ignore an important third whose presence continuously looms just beyond. And then there are the spectres …

Thomas Tessler has lived alone in his New York City room for three years. “‘I have never heard of an American hikikomori,’” his potential ‘rental sister’ remarks when she is asked to visit him by her downtown boutique employer, who in turn has been sought out by Thomas’ desperate, waiting, still-hopeful wife Silke. Megumi, a recent immigrant from Japan, is much more than a ‘rental’; her real-life experience with her own hikikomori brother makes her almost an expert.

Thomas and Megumi’s relationship begins with a letter, delivered by Silke under his door. When conversation doesn’t initially work through the locked barrier, Megumi tries pushing through an origami penguin which Thomas admires then pushes back out. But even in the exchange of offering and rejection, the tiniest promise of communication emerges … and inevitably grows.

To tell you anything more about missing children, a lost sibling, Japanese violence against Koreans, not to mention the wrenching disconnect (and reconnect) of our contemporary lives, would surely be giving away too much.

Some secrets must remain within these pages … and their discovery needs to be on your own. Go, already, go!

Tidbit: After – let me say that again – AFTER you finish this breathtaking novel, check out the 2006 New York Times article, “Shutting Themselves In,” for further fascinating, illuminating, investigative reading.

Tidbit2: On February 15, Jeff Backhaus (really! in the “twitterflesh,” as he describes it – he’s @jeff_backhaus, FYI) sent this: “@SIBookDragon Check out my new short story, about an American immigrant in Korea, either on tumblr or on an e-reader. http://bit.ly/WutTGB.” Since I’m such a Luddite, when asked, he sent these directions: “@SIBookDragon If you want to read them in order start from the bottom left. Then just keep clicking ‘PREV POST.’ Or just skip around.” As for his next novel, he reveals this: “The next novel is still a pile of notebooks, but I’m working hard.” Amazing what can happen on Twitter! Gawwww.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2013

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February 10, 2013 · 10:20 am

The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork

Last Summer of the Death WarriorsWhen Pancho Sanchez arrives at St. Anthony’s Home, his 17-year-old self has already survived too much death, and yet he’s planning on more. The last of his family – his mentally challenged 20-year-old sister – was found dead in a motel room. While the police insist what happened was an accident, Pancho knows his sweet sister was murdered … and with no one left (their father died just three months ago, their mother years before when they were still young children), he has nothing more to lose.

And then he meets D.Q.

Daniel Quentin – “but everyone calls me D.Q.” – is on an impossible quest (Don Quixote, anyone?), mainly because he’s dying … of cancer. He’s been writing his “Death Warrior Manifesto” – “‘I’m not crazy about the name … because it has all sorts of negative implications. ‘Life Warrior’ is probably more accurate because the manifesto is about life, but ‘Death Warrior’ is more mysterious-sounding.’ And he inexplicably chooses Pancho (wasn’t Don Quixote’s sidekick Sancho Panza?) to be his fellow warrior. “‘The first rule is: No whining,’” he insists.

When an experimental treatment becomes available in Albuquerque, D.Q insists Pancho accompany him. Pancho readily agrees, as he’s managed to track down his sister’s killer to an Albuquerque address. Waiting there for D.Q. will be lovely Marisol, who works at the aptly named Casa Esperanza, a care facility for young cancer patients. Waiting, too, is D.Q.’s mother – surprise! he’s not an orphan, after all – who abandoned her son once before but is desperate to redeem herself by saving him this time.

As memorable as this novel is, you can’t believe how much heavier its imprint becomes on your heart, long after you finish it. If you choose to stick the story in your ears, D.Q. and Pancho’s voices won’t stop ringing: narrator Ryan Gesell is both sensitive and controlled, even as the punches (literally) fly.

Author extraordinaire Francisco X. Stork (oh, Marcelo in the Real World, be still my heart!) deals with Big Themes – life, death, love! – with patience and even humor, but he also seamlessly weaves in matters of race, ethnicity, haves vs. have-nots, parenthood, mental illness, and more. Before you close the book, turn to the title once more: that word “Last” keeps resonating, not only for what you’ve just read, but for what gets left unsaid.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2010

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February 2, 2013 · 2:12 pm

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryAt 65, Harold Fry is a quiet, solitary old man, retired from the brewery where he worked much of his adult life. Although he married Maureen – his one and only love – decades later, their days, weeks, years together are rather lonely and withdrawn. He doesn’t talk to or about their son David. And then “[t]he letter that would change everything arrived on a Tuesday.”

From the other end of the British Isle, Queenie Hennessy is writing to say goodbye … she’s dying of cancer. Harold hasn’t heard from her in 20 years, but their briefly shared past is enough to elicit the strongest emotions he’s had in a very long time. He writes Queenie a quick response – “Dear Queenie, Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry. Yours Best wishes—Harold (Fry)” – and walks down the hill towards the nearest postbox, but keeps walking. And walking … and walking, determined that somehow his walking will keep Queenie alive if he can just deliver himself.

Harold Fry’s “unlikely pilgrimage” will take him 627 miles from Kingsbridge in southwest England to Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Scottish border. What happens during his 87 days on the road is a revelatory, eloquent, transforming experience … and one that needs to be personally discovered for every reader. The less you know, the better your read.

I hit ‘play’ knowing only two things: 1. I recognized the title from countless awards and best-of lists; and 2. the phenomenal Jim Broadbent narrates. The one other pre-reading tidbit I highly recommend (no worries, no spoilers) is debut (!!!) novelist Rachel Joyce‘s essay on “Writing Harold Fry,” about the story’s pre-book incarnation as an award-winning radio play she wrote for her dying father. Her official bio mentions she’s written over 20 “original afternoon plays.” Here’s hoping more of that prodigious output transfers to the printed page (or stuck in my ears!).

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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January 27, 2013 · 2:14 pm

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

Left NeglectedSo, here’s the last of the Lisa Genova oeuvre. If I had to rank her three titles thus far, the #1 slot – shelves ahead of her others – remains her stupendous debut, Still Alice, then continues with this, Left Neglected, trailed by her most recent, Love Anthony.

Armed with their Harvard MBAs (I feel I must start there because the protagonist makes reference to that lofty degree at least a dozen times, as if it defines her whole existence), Sarah and Bob are happily married, well-employed, live in a tony Boston suburb with a country house in Vermont, have three adorable young children (named after Peanuts characters – really! – Charlie, Lucy, and Linus), with the perfect nanny to mind them while they put in endless work hours (40 hours is considered part-time). Lest you think their lives are a bit too perfect, Bob is proactively job-hunting because his company is downsizing, Sarah would like a bigger house with another bedroom for a live-in nanny, the family is so busy they can’t even take a weekend off to use that inviting country house, Charlie is having serious problems in first grade, and their ideal nanny is off to get her master’s degree in childhood education.

One rainy Friday – every week, the power couple flip a coin to see who gets to have the kid-free, undisturbed commute into work – Sarah (driving solo) has a terrifying car accident and wakes up in a hospital bed. Initially she seems okay … but the brain damage she’s sustained is diagnosed as Left Neglect, which means everything on her left side seems virtually missing. She doesn’t know where her left arm is, she can’t see her husband if he stands by the window on the left side of her hospital room, she doesn’t see the left side of the page when she tries to read a story to her daughter. She may or may not ever recover.

Therapy, rehab, “homework,” all help … as well as her estranged mother who for the first time in their lives is truly by Sarah’s side even when Sarah makes it clear that her mother is unwanted – too little, too late. In spite of all the support, Sarah’s most difficult challenge will be a readjustment of her expectations, not just of her recovering body, but of her closest relationships, her career, and her elusive peace (piece?) of mind. 

Genova’s background as a Harvard-trained neuroscientist (first line of her bio) surely gives her an intimate understanding of brain-related conditions (which, in her books, all start with the letter ‘A’): Alzheimer’s in Alice, Autism in Anthony, and ADHD and Accident here in Left Neglected. While her writing seems effortlessly fluid, her sentences expressively crafted, her stories, her characters in her latter two novels just don’t correlate with the quality of her words. That said, I’m clearly in the minority as her titles are no strangers to the coveted New York Times bestseller list. As she reveals on her website that she’s “currently working on her fourth novel,” hope springs eternal that her next will be as good as her first.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011

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January 26, 2013 · 5:20 pm

Love Anthony by Lisa Genova

Love AnthonySo enthralling was Lisa Genova‘s Still Alice, I immediately went and got myself her other titles and hit ‘play’ one after the other. I don’t remember the last time I read three books by the same author in such immediate succession. That I got through all three in less than a week proves to me that Genova can write; she’s absolutely capable of crafting gorgeous, expressive prose. And yet after the stupendous originality of Alice, near-perfect sentences were not enough to save Love Anthony and Left Neglected from ultimate disappointment.

[Might I interrupt for a moment with an odd observation: something in Genova’s bio – that the first line mentions “valedictorian,” “Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard” perhaps? – tells me that she’s definitely Type A (not a judgment, just an observation; takes one to know one, ahem!). Interestingly enough, all three of her books deal with A-conditions: Alzheimer’s in Alice, Adultery and Autism in Anthony, and ADHD and Accident in Left Neglected (which is her only title without A-named characters, and instead includes Peanuts-inspired Charlie, Lucy, and Linus … but I’m jumping too far ahead).

Love Anthony, Genova’s latest, is the story of two women whose paths cross unknowingly on a Nantucket beach in the “Prologue” and then again with recognition almost at book’s end. If you choose to stick the novel in your ears, Debra Messing’s narration is okay enough in the beginning, but she never stops sounding like … well … Debra Messing, which proves to be a liability as the story clearly calls for some distinction between the two very different protagonists.

Beth Ellis asks her bartender husband to leave when she finds out he’s been cheating for a year with the restaurant’s pretty young hostess; with the help of her book club buddies, especially her new-agey, spiritually in-touch best friend, she reclaims the true self she thought she had to give up when she became a wife and mother. New to the island, Olivia Donatelli is recently separated from a husband she still loves, trying to heal from the sudden death of their young son who had autism. Beth writes a novel about a boy she’s never met but is all too real to her; Olivia takes family portraits, capturing other people’s stories – sometimes true, other times made up. Words and pictures will bring these women together, and then set each of them free.

See-through characters? Too many. Predictable storylines? Definitely. Unbelievable ending? Yup. Although if you can suspend your raised-eyebrow-no-way!, what I’ll just call the ‘Anthony-connection’ is perhaps the most heartfelt, authentic part of the story. Oh, the irony, the irony.

Did the commute pass more quickly? Were the miles easier on the legs? I’d say ‘yup … enough’ – enough to turn Left, unNeglected. Stay tuned.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2012

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January 19, 2013 · 2:45 pm

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Still AliceI’m not quite sure how this 2009 debut novel actually ended up on my iPod (surely I ordered it at some point) and why I decided to click on it when I did. How ironic that missing memory quickly became a point of concern when I realized what the story would be about … readers who appreciated that other Alice novel, Alice LaPlante’s spectacular Turn of Mind should absolutely, totally, utterly, immediately read this one.

Alice Howland’s husband can’t find his glasses. Again. “How could he, someone so smart, a scientist, not see what was right in front of him.” How many times have I had that exact same thought?

But through the rest of that first chapter, Alice is the one who can’t remember where her BlackBerry charger is hiding, can’t conjure up the word lexicon in the middle of a familiar lecture she’s giving, tells her daughter the wrong arrival time of her flight, and most disturbing of all, suddenly doesn’t know where she is while she’s out for a run on the same streets she’s called home for 25 years.

Alice is a renowned cognitive psychology Harvard professor who specializes in linguistics. She’s married to a brilliant scientist and fellow Harvard prof who just might someday soon find the cure for cancer. They have three grown children together, the older two highly accomplished, the youngest still searching and taking her own path. In October 2003, Alice celebrates her 50th birthday. The following January, she’s diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Even as her protagonist is a brilliant, still-young woman with an incurable disease whose life spirals out of control, Lisa Genova – herself a Harvard-trained neuroscientist – never, ever devolves into hand-wringing, maudlin pity. As Alice forgets more and more of her inspiringly accomplished life, Genova begins to replace her erudite vocabulary with ‘something,’ and ‘thingy,’ all the while continuing Alice’s story with compassionate insight – through all the loss, she remains still Alice. Her illness brings moments of surprising grace: understanding (if not forgiveness) of her difficult father’s final years, new friendships with others living with her same disease, and a renewed, evolving relationship with her youngest daughter.

In the final speech Alice ever gives before an audience, she sends out a much-needed request and heartfelt reminder to every one of us: “‘I encourage you to empower us, not limit us. If someone has a spinal cord injury, if someone has lost a limb or has a functional disability from a stroke, families and professionals work hard to rehabilitate that person, to find ways to cope and manage despite these losses. Work with us. Help us develop tools to function around our losses in memory, language, and cognition. Encourage involvement in support groups. We can help each other, both people with dementia and their caregivers, navigate through this Dr. Seuss land of neither here nor there.

“‘My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrow are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I’ll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.’”

One last word of warning: If you don’t want to make a total spectacle of yourself, don’t read or stick in your ears in public [Genova herself crisply narrates the audible version of this deservedly award-winning bestseller]. That said, while you’re making a blubbering puddle of yourself, someone just might ask you why … which will give you the opportunity to share the book, and the love. In the end, you’ll see … it’s all about the love.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009

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