One-sentence summary: A large family deals with debilitating and life-changing mental illnesses among their children, which leads scientists and doctors to use their family as a case study on schizophrenia among other things.
B.A.D. Girls Book Rating: 7
Our favorite thing about it: This story was so fascinating to read about.
Our least favorite thing about it: At times, there was too much clinical information included.
Main Topics of Discussion: Siblings, Science, Trauma, Abuse, Mental illness, Big family dynamics
Our favorite quote: “Schizophrenia is not about multiple personalities. It is about walling oneself off from consciousness, first slowly and then all at once, until you are no longer accessing anything that others accept as real.”
Notes: There was so much to discuss in this novel and in the Oprah video that we watched during our meeting. The book was equal parts fascinating and heartbreaking. It was especially heartbreaking when you take into account the time period that these diagnoses began in the family and how little was understood about mental illness. And also the fact that the family and parents had so little choice on what to do about their sons who were ill. They were trapped by the disease. The effect the disease had on those who were not diagnosed was heartbreaking too. The abuse the girls suffered and their sense of abandonment was terrible. The emotional suppression, which was so common at the time, and also a factor of being in a big family, just made everything so much worse. And not only emotional suppression, but talking about anything related to the illness at all was a no-no.
We both liked and disliked the documentary style of writing. We loved the story telling parts because they read like a memoir, but the more clinical parts describing the illness, potential causes, searches for treatment, etc. dragged on a bit. It’s not that we weren’t interested in those things at all, but we would have preferred more editing or concise writing.
Memorable Meeting Moments: We watched a video of Oprah interviewing the author with more photos and interviews with some of the family members. It was very interesting and the perfect thing to watch after reading. This was our first indoor meeting since February.
What We Ate: Amberly made us a new-to-her recipe: sausage stuffed roasted acorn squash (amazing!), baked brie and jam appetizers, and whoopie pies for dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment