Hidden Valley Road

I liked this book a great deal. I always enjoy books where people are laid bare in all their human mess. Mental illness, surviving it, growing as people, learning who your parents were, forgiving others, forgiving yourself... this is all good stuff. However, I'm going to complain and rant anyway because I can't really interpret the science and the family dynamic for you, but I can sure as heck tell you about the voice of the author.

I did not like the way author constantly seemed to be judging people. I realize he was given info in a one sided way but he used super judgy language to talk about the family matriarch Mimi. He was also clearly super critical of Catholicism which annoyed me to no end. Constantly harping on the family's 12 children. I mean you can take a look at these screenshots from searches I did of the book looking for the phrase "so many children." That phrase felt constant!

 Any time Catholicism was brought up it was in a negative light; "austere" and "authoritarian" are great examples of the negative phrasing used. I wish I'd taken  more screenshots! These were definitely not the only times.

But when weird pagan, Buddhism, and other alternative religions/lifestyles, were talked about it was always in a healing way. I mean, whatever, sigh, this family is a total product of their times but NOT a great example of Catholicism. Rife with divorce, contraceptives, and abortion. And speaking of abortion, after clinically dismissing it as a procedure earlier in the book the author uses the phrase "unborn babies" when talking about medical breakthroughs! The disconnect was wild. 

Anyway, if I could remove the author's voice from the book I'd have liked it much better. He was so obviously an atheist (though he appeared to worship "Science") and a leftist. And I'm SO tired of that voice in the culture. Even an iota of faith in a loving God would have changed the tone of this book. And, while the non-sick siblings, particularly Mary and Margaret (who were the driving force behind the book and it's main sources) all drove me nuts too, they at least came across as very human in that way that I could love and forgive. As I said earlier, they are all products of the time - the cultural and sexual revolution of the 60's. At least towards the end of the book they seemed to see Mimi in a new light, so that was nice. I really liked Mimi and wanted to defend her at every turn. Maybe just because I'm the mom of a lot of kids? I don't know, she just had a lot of humanity to me. And she was clearly the underdog and the scapegoat in this story. She was also the only person in the whole damn book willing to do her duty - to stay married, to serve her sick children and not institutionalize them, which her well children constantly seem to criticize her for. It was nice when Mary and Margaret sort of, a little bit, got that. And it was nice to see that Mary at least, has a little Mimi in her.

I enjoyed the science and the family drama - in terms of topic it was an A for me despite all the leftism.