Everything Is Fine
Ratings3
Average rating5
15
Ratings3
Average rating5
Grief, mental illness, and the bonds of family are movingly explored in this extraordinary memoir “suffused with emotional depth and intellectual inquiry” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises) as a writer delves into the tragedy of his mother’s violent death at the hands of his brother who struggled with schizophrenia. Perfect for fans of An Unquiet Mind and The Bright Hour. Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in red chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life—Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home. Devastated by the grief of losing his mother, Vince is also consumed by an act so incomprehensible that it overshadows every happy memory of life growing up in his seemingly idyllic middle-class family. “In candid, smoothly unspooling prose, Granata reconstructs life and memory from grief, writing a moving testament to the therapy of art, the power of record, and his immutable love for his family” (Booklist).
Reviews with the most likes.
Un récit sublimement humain sur une horrible tragédie. C'est bien écrit et pourtant terriblement difficile à lire par moment, tant la tragédie et l'horreur prennent parfois le dessus. L'auteur parvient tout de même à instiller une grande part d'humanité dans son histoire familiale. L'amour, la maladie et la mort réunis dans un grand livre sur les troubles psychiques et leurs conséquences tragiques.
Just one of many scenes in this book that will stick with me for a long time:
I cried, sitting in the daylight on Elise's couch. She put her hand on mine. “I just noticed that book, the one I was reading.” “ I know,” Elise said. “I remember.” “But I'm crying about this,” I said, squeezing her hand, “not that.” It felt important then to explain these tears—crying about this, and not that, mourning our lost relationship, not my mother's death. “It's okay if it's about that,” Elise said. I don't know why I thought I could partition sadness, draw boundaries around tears, name their sources like countries on a map.
I struggle with how to review this when it's so compelling and emotional as a narrative, but the research and the framing is so shallow and driven by an agenda (and I mean that neutrally, not in “g-ddamn wokies again” way). Granata went through something unbearably traumatic and has come out the other side with a worldview that I find grating and poorly-thought-out, as someone with folks in my life who have been severely harmed by institutionalization.
Tread carefully if you have any ADAB-style takes about mental hospitals, as Granata is only sympathetic to them and not to the bodily autonomy of those with psychosis struggles.
