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A review by lambsears
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
4.0
I may be avoiding absorbing all the angst, stress, melancholy and apprehension that seems to pervade so much modern fiction these days, but I'm not averse to a confronting read - and the life of this family is all that and more.
In this family of 12 children - 10 boys and 2 girls - 6 would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, shattering their lives and damaging the lives of their healthy siblings. The story is mind-boggling.
However, much of what is now understood about this complex and still shadowy disease is due to the contribution to various studies by this fractured family.
Kolker tells the devastating story of these boys and their siblings compassionately, while at the same time documenting the paths that science took to reach the current understanding of this widespread illness.
An enormously compulsive read.
In this family of 12 children - 10 boys and 2 girls - 6 would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, shattering their lives and damaging the lives of their healthy siblings. The story is mind-boggling.
However, much of what is now understood about this complex and still shadowy disease is due to the contribution to various studies by this fractured family.
Kolker tells the devastating story of these boys and their siblings compassionately, while at the same time documenting the paths that science took to reach the current understanding of this widespread illness.
An enormously compulsive read.