Hidden Valley Road

We are more than just our genes. We are, in some way, a product of the people who surround us—the people we're forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later.

I took a whole seminar on schizophrenia in college and still think about it often, as an example of how profound and insidious mental illness is, and how little we truly know about it. Kolker quotes a scientist in this book who states that schizophrenia is arguably the most devastating disease in the world. I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. This book illustrates the unbelievable terror and trauma of family in which six out of twelve children develop schizophrenia, one by one. It is beautifully and sensitively handled and I know I will think about it as often as I do that seminar.

This was a really good, but really difficult book to read. I'm still not sure I liked it exactly, but I'm glad to have read it. Some of it hit a bit too close to home - mental illness runs in my family, though not schizophrenia, but a close family friend who we call uncle is schizophrenic; my grandmother is/was very much like the matriarch here in not wanting to talk about the bad things. Other parts dragged - I get that it's a huge family and everyone needs to be discussed, but it got to be a bit much sometimes. Overall, really well done.

Kolker does an amazing job of weaving together this incredible family narrative with science/medical/psychology research. The organization of the book is fantastic. The story is tragic, but not without some element of redemption.