Imagining Robert : My Brother, Madness, and Survival : A Memoir

ISBN: 9780688149680

Reviews
Book News www.booknews.com An award-winning novelist tells the story of his relationship with his chronically mentally ill brother, Robert, detailing the brothers' childhood and the different paths their lives have taken since Robert's first breakdown at age 19. He chronicles his brother's hospitalizations and struggles and the impact of Robert's illness on the family, and shows how his relationship with his brother has been sustained by the power of love. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. Kirkus Reviews ~ An uncommon tale of brotherly love, and a passionate defense of the notion that dignity belongs as much to the mad as to the rest of us. Like Susan Sheehan's Is There No Place on Earth for Me?, this volume enters profoundly into the life and suffering of a man with a severe mental illness. In this case, however, novelist Neugeboren (Before My Life Began, 1985, etc.) is writing about his younger brother, Robert, who was first hospitalized at the age of 19, after trying to kill his father. Robert's life acutely poses the question of when, and how, originality and eccentricity prefigure and finally cross the border into madness. Robert was a charming and gifted child during the Neugeboren brothers' boyhood in Brooklyn in the 1940s and '50s. (Robert's wit and gentle spirit are everywhere manifest in the letters, quoted here at length, that he wrote from various institutions.) But finally eccentricity became disorderliness and confusion, and Robert began a lifetime's journey in and out of institutions where he was treated by an ever-changing but consistently incompetent cast of therapists, on and off of a pharmacy-full of medications, in and out of the latest ``miracle'' treatments. How did the promising boy who beguiled everyone with his song-and-dance routines become the man whose narrow life centers on halfway houses, menial work, and occasional visits to Atlantic City? Neugeboren, who rejects the reduction of mental illness to biochemical imbalances, explores their family's troubled past (a father who was a failure as a breadwinner, a domineering mother who scorned her husband, doted on Robert, and denigrated Jay), and his own adult life as the brother of a mentally ill man, single father of three children, and son of a mother with Alzheimer's. A rich, textured, and deeply sad tale emerges, enlarged by Neugeboren's persistent belief that in telling Robert's story, he can ``be a witness to his life, in all its complexity, uniqueness, hope, and despair'' and make it ``fully human.'' (Author tour) Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews Library Journal Reviews www.cahners.com Focusing on his brother Robert's history of mental illness from age 19, Neugeboren's memoir is a story of hope and love amid frequent disappointment. A novelist (Poli: A Mexican Boy in Early Texas, Corona, 1992), short story writer, and Guggenheim Fellowship winner, Neugeboren has remained his brother's lifeline, meeting with psychiatrists, consulting with caseworkers, and providing constant love and support, even after their parents had given up. Robert has spent the last 30 years in and out of institutions and halfway houses, the victim of numerous new therapies and drugs. After he was seemingly cured, he had yet another breakdown. Skillfully written in an episodic style that mirrors both brothers' lives, this book will appeal and offer solace to those with loved ones suffering from mental illness. Neugeboren reveals the charming, witty, and lovable personality of Robert while expressing his considerable

frustration dealing with the mental health system. Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo # Copyright 1998 Library Journal Reviews Publishers Weekly Reviews www.cahners.com Novelist Neugeboren (An Orphan's Tale) has written a detailed, exquisitely painful and always thoughtful account of his younger brother's long struggle with mental illness. He includes scenes from their Brooklyn childhood of constantly warring parents, extremes of love and hatred, of holding on too tightly and rejecting too absolutely. Robert Neugeboren, who was born in 1943, suffers from a variety of disorders, all roughly grouped together under schizophrenia. He has needed long periods of restraint and multiple hospital stays. His 30-year battle has coincided frighteningly with numerous changes in our attitudes toward and treatment of such illness. Shuttled from doctor to doctor, Robert has been dosed with almost every polysyllabic wonder drug that has surfaced. Some worked; some didn't. None offered the "magic bullet" that the author hoped and prayed for. Neither did such bizarre fads as putting patients into insulininduced comas. The narrative touches on the author's parallel life as a writer, academic, divorce and father of two and is shot through with an understandable sense of guilt. Could the family have done more? Would greater financial resources have changed Robert's chances for a normal life? The banal dysfunction of the New York State mental health establishment is horrifying in this portrayal, yet, to most readers of the daily newspaper, totally expected. Nothing is solved here, but Neugeboren's account may bring understanding to those who can barely imagine such horrors and comfort to those who have and have felt alone. Photos. (Feb.)

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